Shannon Taylor is the Democratic nominee for Virginia's 1st Congressional District, having won a crowded seven-candidate primary on August 4, 2026. A veteran prosecutor, she is running to take on the same culture of corruption in Washington that she has spent her career fighting in courtrooms, pledging to ban stock trading by members of Congress and reject corporate PAC money as she works to flip one of the nation's most competitive House seats.

A native of Charlottesville, Taylor earned her bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of Virginia and her law degree from the University of Richmond School of Law. She began her legal career as a prosecutor in Richmond before serving as a special assistant in the U.S. Attorney's Office and special counsel to a regional grand jury. In 2011, she won an upset election to become Henrico County's Commonwealth's Attorney -- the first woman ever to hold the office.

Taylor has served as Henrico's top prosecutor for 14 years, winning re-election three times. Her office has focused on prosecuting sex trafficking cases, created a task force to combat the opioid epidemic, and worked with law enforcement to take illegal guns off the streets. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Taylor was among the first prosecutors in the country to publicly commit to never prosecuting women or doctors for abortion care. She has earned endorsements from Governor Abigail Spanberger, Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, more than a dozen sheriffs, and labor unions including the Teamsters and SMART Union, as she now takes her record of independent leadership to Congress.