LEWISTON — Two of Maine’s five new judges to be sworn in at a robing ceremony later this week are lawyers who live in Androscoggin County. They will be appointed to fill vacancies in the Maine District Court system.

William Schneider of Durham recently served as acting director of the Governor’s Office of Policy and Management where he oversaw efforts to make state government more efficient and effective. Before that, he served for two years as Maine’s attorney general, the state’s top lawyer, overseeing a roster of attorneys who represent the legal interests of state departments and prosecute crimes against the state.

For eight years, Schneider served as an assistant U.S. attorney responsible for federal anti-terrorism investigations and prosecutions. From 2009-10, he served on the Guantanamo Review Task Force, charged with helping to determine the appropriate disposition of detainees.

Schneider also served two terms in the Maine Legislature and worked as an assistant attorney general for five years.

He is a graduate of the University of Maine School of Law and, before that, the U.S. Military Academy. He served as a highly decorated soldier in the U.S. Army for five years, where he achieved the rank of captain, commanding a special forces detachment before his retirement in 1986.

He raises alpacas with his wife at her farm.

Barbara Raimondi of Auburn was a practicing lawyer for 28 years at the firm of Trafton and Matzen in Auburn, where she had been a partner since 1989. Before that, she worked as an associate for five years at the Augusta law firm of Lipman and Parks.

She earned a bachelor’s degree at Connecticut College, a master’s degree in American literature at Brown University and a juris doctorate at Boston University School of Law, where she edited the law review.

Raimondi has appeared at the district and superior court levels trying a broad range of cases for civil and criminal clients. She has argued appeals before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

She has extensive experience in family law. She has represented minors charged with criminal violations, served as a guardian ad litem, done child protection work and owned and operated with her husband a developmental day care center. She also has acted as mediator and referee in family matters.

She served for five years as a legal representative defending mentally ill patients who were involuntarily committed to the former Augusta Mental Health Institute.

Raimondi also served for six years on a screening panel for the Maine Board of Bar Overseers, and as a member of the grievance panel for the Maine Labor Relations Board as well as an alternate chairwoman of that board.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com

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