Attorney becomes minister

Chicago attorney Dernard Dudley Newell of Newell & Associates will be installed March 29 as pastor of the 135-member Logan Street Baptist Church in Batavia, where he began preaching on Dec. 21.

A graduate of the Howard University Law School who was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1997, Newell served on the staffs of Senators Joseph Biden and John Glenn.

In Chicago after finishing law school, he was an assistant state’s attorney and an attorney with Duckworth & Schuman. In 1997, he met Barack Obama during a book club discussion of “Dreams of My Father” in a neighborhood coffee shop.

Newell also earned master’s degrees in public administration from George Washington University and in divinity from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary.