Andrew Alire

Introduction

Andrew Alire, 40, a former Santa Barbara County deputy public defender who left for his own criminal-defense practice, faces felony rape charges after a Connecticut woman told a California courtroom he assaulted her in his home in January 2025 while she was too intoxicated to resist. Alire — a UC College of the Law, San Francisco graduate admitted to the State Bar of California in 2012 — was arrested March 17, 2025, and pleaded not guilty to all charges at his June 30 arraignment. On November 10, 2026, after his accuser recounted the encounter at a preliminary hearing, Judge Stephen Foley found sufficient evidence to hold him for trial, and prosecutors added a third felony count of rape by force.

Background Information

Alire graduated from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, and has been a member of the State Bar since 2012; he worked for the Santa Barbara County Public Defender’s office before opening his own private practice. In 2016, years before the rape case, he was arrested for soliciting prostitution, the Santa Barbara Independent reported in July 2025. His State Bar profile now carries a consumer alert notifying the public of the criminal accusations, and he remains actively licensed to practice law.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Charged with felony rape of a drugged victim and held to answer for trial after his accuser’s preliminary-hearing testimony; prosecutors have added a third rape count. Alire has pleaded not guilty — his denial on the record — remains free on $100,000 bail, and no finding of guilt has been made against him.

The case against a Santa Barbara attorney accused of raping an intoxicated woman moved forward after the alleged victim recounted her encounter in court, the New York Post reported. According to her testimony, she was visiting Santa Barbara from Connecticut and connected with Alire through a meetup app on January 14, 2025, making clear she wanted a platonic connection rather than a sexual encounter; after she mentioned enjoying darts, they arranged to meet at the James Joyce bar downtown. She said she was “having fun” until, after buying a drink and returning from the bathroom, her condition changed suddenly — “It just felt like a wave of being really tired, really fast. I couldn’t keep my balance.” Surveillance footage played in court showed her struggling to stay steady, pushing Alire’s hand off her shoulder, and resting her head on the bar about an hour after they arrived.

She testified that she asked Alire to arrange an Uber to a friend’s address — intending to leave alone — but he joined her and proposed going to his house to play darts. “I said over and over that I didn’t want to go home with him,” she told the court, describing her pleas to the driver; when they arrived she begged to stay in the car, and the driver told her to get out because he had another pickup. Inside the house, she said, Alire guided her into a bedroom with a hand on her back and shoulder and encouraged her to lie on the bed. Her next memory, she testified, was of Alire on top of her, her jeans and underwear removed and her shirt pushed up; when she tried to sit up, “he kind of pushed me back down with his hands on my shoulders, and my neck and my arms.” Asked to rate the force on a scale of one to ten, she gave it a seven; photographs documenting injuries to her body were admitted into evidence.

She said Alire insisted on driving her home; she gave a different address so he would not learn where she was staying, and testified that during the ride he “kept asking me if I remembered how drunk I was and how embarrassing I was.” Back at her friend’s apartment she showered five times, and later reported pain in her wrist and shoulders, throat and genital soreness, and bleeding. She arranged preventive-care testing, called a national sexual-assault hotline that referred her to Santa Barbara’s Standing Together to End Sexual Assault, reported to police, and underwent a forensic examination, per the Post. Police arrested Alire on March 17, 2025, and booked him into the County Jail; prosecutors charged him with rape of a drugged victim and oral copulation of an intoxicated person, and he pleaded not guilty to all charges at his June 30, 2025 arraignment, appearing with his attorney, Monica Cummins, Noozhawk reported. He has been free on $100,000 bail.

A second woman had already come forward by July 2025: she told the Independent she experienced memory loss and disorientation during an encounter with Alire that she considered inconsistent with how much alcohol she had consumed — during which he purchased a drink for her — and recalled a sexual encounter but could not remember its full extent. She wrote that Alire’s alleged actions “were not a misunderstanding, not a lapse in judgment,” noting he was already facing criminal charges related to the sexual assault of another individual. Alire and his attorney did not respond to the paper’s requests for comment.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The November 10 preliminary hearing put the allegations on the public record in the accuser’s own words. The Independent reported that Alire, watching from the defense table, rocked and swiveled in his chair and periodically smiled at the woman as she testified — the man she accused of assault sitting feet away as a prosecutor walked the court through her night. The paper’s account of the hearing circulated as the Post framed the story for its national readership as an alleged rape victim airing “horrific claims” against a “high-flying” local attorney.

The cross-examination drew attention of its own: Alire’s defense attorneys questioned the woman about when she first told investigators specific details — her pleas to the Uber driver, being pulled from the car, being pushed onto the bed — and also about her weight, her drinking habits and her use of meetup apps. She acknowledged some details were absent from her initial police interviews, explaining that the first officer requested a broad account, and described her memory of the encounter as now “better, much more sharp.” The testimony added a public data point to a case the Independent had tracked since the charging headlines of mid-2025, when the second woman’s account first appeared.

Current Status

Alire is headed toward trial: after the November 10, 2026 preliminary hearing, Judge Foley found sufficient evidence for the prosecution to move forward, and Alire is scheduled to be re-arraigned in December 2026 on the original charges — felony rape of a drugged victim and oral copulation by intoxication — plus an additional felony count of rape by force, per the Post. He remains free on $100,000 bail, has pleaded not guilty, and no trial verdict or conviction exists in the record; the allegations against him are unadjudicated. He continues to hold an active California law license, with a consumer alert on his State Bar profile disclosing the criminal accusations, and it rests on the charges, the testimony and the December re-arraignment to come.

Impact on Their Career/Life

A criminal-defense lawyer whose practice was built on defending the accused now stands as a felony defendant himself, held to answer on three rape-related counts with his license technically intact but his State Bar page stamped with a public consumer alert. The second woman’s 2025 account of unexplained memory loss after a drink he purchased hangs over the trial to come, and the alleged victim’s decision — “I was really embarrassed. I was worried about my name being public and my career” — has already put the case’s details, and Alire’s courtroom demeanor, in front of the public. Whatever the December re-arraignment and trial bring, the “high-flying” local attorney described in national coverage is practicing law under the shadow of a pending felony prosecution.

Sources

@nypost trigger tweet (Santa Barbara attorney trial), November 12, 2026. source
New York Post, “Santa Barbara defense attorney faces trial in sexual assault,” November 12, 2026. source
Santa Barbara Independent, “Jane Doe Testifies in Rape Case Against Santa Barbara Attorney,” November 11, 2026. source
Santa Barbara Independent, “Santa Barbara Attorney Charged with Rape,” July 2, 2025. source
Noozhawk, “Santa Barbara Attorney Pleads Not Guilty to Sexual Assault Charges,” July 2025. source