Ashley Moody

Some Lesser Known Facts About Ashley Moody

• She is a fifth-generation Floridian.

• She was a cheerleading captain and class vice president at her school.

  

• She has served as a member of the National Honor Society and Future Farmers of America.

• She was a member of her hometown, Plant City’s Youth Council as part of a program that helped students understand the local government leadership.

• She was a member of the drama club at her school during which she participated in various dramas including ‘Annie’ and ‘The Inner Circle.’

• In 1993, she was selected as the Florida Strawberry Festival Queen.

  

• She served as the president of the Florida Blue Key, a student leadership honour society at the University of Florida.

  

• Although she was a supporter of the Democrat Party in the tradition of her hometown, she switched to supporting the Republican Party in 1998 in support of the American politician, Jeb Bush.

• In 1999, she was selected by Jeb Bush to serve as a student representative on the Board of Regents, a now-defunct governing body for Florida’s university system

• At the beginning of her career, she practised commercial litigation at Holland & Knight law firm and often volunteered to help the victims of domestic violence.

• During her time at the law firm, she won the firm’s annual chicken wing eating contest twice.

• Later, she joined the United States Attorney’s Office as a federal prosecutor in Jacksonville, Florida where she prosecuted cases involving drugs, firearms, and fraud.

• While working as a federal prosecutor, she met her husband, Justin Duralia, who was an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration at the time.

• Her work as an attorney was praised by the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

• At 31, she served as the youngest judge in Florida for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida in 2006.

  

• She has served as a professor at Stetson University College of Law.

• She has served on the judicial faculty for Florida’s New Judges College, Advanced Judicial Studies, and the Circuit Judges Conference.

• She has worked as an associate attorney for the DIA Group, a Spanish supermarket chain.

• She has founded the ‘Attorney Ad Litem’ program as a judge that allows the recruitment of volunteer attorneys to stand in place of parents who did not appear in court with their children.

• She has helped start ‘Crossroads For Florida Kids,’ a nonprofit organisation that trains and mentors pro bono attorneys to represent the kids from Hillsborough County, Florida in their dependency and delinquency cases.

• She has helped start a mentoring program for at-risk children within the juvenile delinquency system with the help of the youth organisation, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Tampa Bay.

• In 2009, her family sued American President Donald Trump alleging that he had made fraudulent and negligent misrepresentations regarding their involvement in the Trump Tower Tampa condominium project. The case was settled in 2011.

• In an interview in 2020, she talked about feeling disgusted by the French film, ‘Cuties’ (2020) and demanded American OTT service provider Netflix stop streaming the film. She said,
  

  As a mother and public servant dedicated to ending human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of our children, I am disgusted and discouraged that this film is being circulated in mainstream media. I am calling on Netflix to protect our children and common decency by removing Cuties from its streaming platform.”

• She further signed a letter along with three fellow attorney generals to the Netflix CEO demanding the removal of the film from its platform.

• After Donald Trump’s loss of presidency against the former American President, Joe Biden in 2020, she signed a legal brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that allowed the counting of late-arriving absentee ballots.

• In 2023, she filed a lawsuit against Joe Biden’s administration claiming that it was seeking retaliation for Florida’s law restricting the deduction of union dues from the wages of employees by the public sector employer.

• She further claimed that the administration’s threat of withholding $800 million in funds from the state of Florida violated the Spending Clause and Administrative Procedure Act.

• In October 2023, she filed a lawsuit against the American multinational technology company Meta, accusing it of causing serious harm to children through its social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

• In October 2024, she filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice alleging that the Department’s attempt to stop independent investigation by Florida following the second attempted assassination of President Donald Trump was unlawful.

• She is a vocal supporter of people aged 18-21 being able to buy guns. She also supports the open carrying of firearms and concealed carrying of weapons on state university campuses.

• In January 2025, American Governor Ron DeSantis announced that he would appoint Ashley as the U.S. Senator.