Jerry and Barbara had their first date on May 22, 1995, where they avidly discussed their shared love of baseball. That love for baseball endured and continued when the Washington Nationals came to Washington in 2005. Jerry and Barbara had season tickets beginning with the Nationals’ very first season. They attended over 50 games a year until Barbara became ill in October 2007. A great moment for Barbara, after she became ill, was catching a foul ball at a Nationals’ game.

Jerry and Barbara were married on June 25, 2000, in Washington, D.C., at Dumbarton Oaks — a historic mansion in Georgetown — after a five-year courtship. Some 200 persons attended the wedding.

After Barbara’s death in 2009, Jerry, with the support of his law firm, Drinker Biddle, established the Barbara McDowell and Gerald S. Hartman Foundation which is dedicated to supporting and funding high impact litigation cases that address systemic issues related to social justice causes.

Jerry, an attorney, graduated from Columbia College, Columbia Business School, and George Washington University Law School. He served as a law clerk to the former Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Early in his legal career, Jerry worked in the Employment Section of the Civil Rights Division of the United States Justice Department from 1976 to 1980. He litigated many pattern and practice employment discrimination cases, including several in Mississippi and Alabama. For his work at the Civil Rights Division, Jerry was awarded a Special Commendation Award from the Attorney General of the United States.

In 1973, during his time as a law clerk, Jerry visited, with two others, Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of three slain civil rights workers. Jerry recounted his harrowing visit in “Lest We Forget.”

During the 1980s, Jerry was a tenured law professor at Wake Forest Law School, where he taught employment discrimination law, labor law, and administrative law. For many years, Jerry was an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University Law School where he taught a course in employment discrimination litigation. Jerry is the co-author of a comprehensive textbook on employment discrimination, Defending and Preventing Employment Litigation.

Jerry practiced employment law as a partner at several large national law firms, including Drinker Biddle from which he retired in 2017.

Jerry has been active in social justice programs at Barbara’s church, Westmoreland United Church of Christ, and has established an endowment to support those programs in Barbara’s name.

Jerry also initiated an endowment at the Legal Aid Society of Washington, D.C., with the support of Barbara’s friends, the Jones Day and Drinker Biddle law firms, and a bequest from Barbara’s estate, to fund the Appellate Advocacy Program that Barbara started. Jerry has been actively working with Legal Aid on some of its appellate briefs and served on the board of Legal Aid from 2010 to 2018.

The Legal Aid Society awarded Barbara McDowell its Servant of Justice Award presented by Sally Gordon, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, on April 29, 2014, at Legal Aid’s annual dinner. Jerry accepted the award for Barbara (watch video and download written copy). Eight hundred persons attended that dinner, including numerous members of the federal and District of Columbia judiciary and family and friends of Barbara (view the dinner program announcing the award, read a press release issued by Drinker Biddle about the Legal Aid Society).

For his pro bono activities in connection to the Foundation, Jerry was recognized as a “Champion of Justice” by The National Law Journal. The award ceremony on September 30, 2010, honored Jerry for his public service.

The announcement in the National Law Journal read as follows:

“Barbara McDowell, a leading appellate lawyer in Washington and head of the appellate project at the Legal Aid Society, died of brain cancer in January 2009. Her illness and death cut off a bright future; she'd been talked about as a possible solicitor general in a Democratic administration. The only way Hartman could carry on, he says, was to continue her good works. "I took over that job," he said. So he asked his firm to launch a pro bono initiative that would pursue litigation to deal with systemic problems and benefit more than just one plaintiff. Drinker Biddle responded eagerly, and more than 60 lawyers have volunteered time to the Barbara McDowell initiative, in addition to the firm's other pro bono work. Projects so far include a Mississippi lawsuit challenging inadequate post-conviction legal help for death row inmates. Hartman runs the initiative on top of his regular labor and employment practice.
— Tony Mauro, National Employment Law Journal

Jerry continues as the President and Chair of the Barbara McDowell and the Gerald S. Hartman Foundation and the Barbara McDowell Public Interest Law Center, both of which he founded.