Donald F. Samuel graduated from Oberlin College in 1975 and the University of Georgia School of Law in 1980 (cum laude), where he was an editor of the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law. He served as law clerk to United States District Court Judge Harold L. Murphy (N.D.Ga.) following his graduation from law school and then joined what is now known as GARLAND, SAMUEL & LOEB, P.C. He is past-President of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (GACDL) and a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). In 1999, he was elected to membership in the American Board of Criminal Lawyers. In 2000, he was inducted into the American College of Trial Lawyers.

Don Samuel is the author of a treatise on Georgia Criminal Law, GEORGIA CRIMINAL LAW CASE FINDER, published by Lexis Law Publishing and a treatise on criminal law in the Eleventh Circuit, ELEVENTH CIRCUIT CRIMINAL HANDBOOK also published annually by Lexis Law Publishing. In 1999 he completed work on a third book published by the James Publishing Company titled FEDERAL CRIMINAL LAW DIGEST.

Don has been listed in Best Lawyers in America every year since 1993.  In two recent surveys of 24,000 practicing lawyers in Georgia, he was ranked among the top 100 lawyers in the state - one of only three lawyers specializing in criminal defense to achieve this status.

He is the author of several law review articles, including four in the Georgia Bar Journal, Georgia RICO (Winter 1984); The Money Laundering Control Act of 1986: Will Attorneys Be Taken to the Cleaners? (Spring 1988); The 1994 Georgia Criminal Procedure Discovery Bill (January 1995); and Abolishing the Forfeiture Laws (Spring 1995).

Don was the President of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (GACDL), which has over 1,200 members and served as the chairman of the Amicus Curiae Committee of that organization for several years.  In 2007 Don was appointed chairman of the Legislative Affairs Committee of the GACDL.

Among his more notable trials are:

Don has spoken at seminars throughout the southeast, including at the Eleventh Circuit Judicial Conference in 1999; over forty Continuing Legal Education seminars in Georgia; the American Bar Association annual meeting and the national conference of Federal Public Defenders. He is a frequent guest at CNN and local television programs concerning legal matters. Don is also an adjunct professor of law at Georgia State University where he teaches an advanced criminal law course on White Collar Crime.

He is married to the author Melissa Fay Greene, who wrote Praying for Sheetrock, a non-fiction account of the civil rights movement in McIntosh County, Georgia and The Temple Bombing, which chronicled the story of the 1958 bombing of The Temple in Atlanta, Georgia. Both books won several national awards. She recently completed a book about the AIDS crisis in Ethiopia, There Is No Me Without You.

Don and Melissa have nine children, including one child they adopted from rural Bulgaria and four children they adopted from Ethiopia.