President Joe Biden nominated Bottoms as vice chair of civic engagement and voter protection at the DNC for the 2021–2025 term.

[3] In June 2022, Bottoms joined the Biden administration as senior advisor and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement[4] where she served until February 2023.

Bottoms was investigated during the mayoral election for several lump payments to campaign staff totaling more than $180,000 that were not reported properly.

[17] In October 2017, she voluntarily returned $25,700 in campaign contributions she had received from PRAD Group, an engineering contractor whose office had been raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation the previous month.

[23][24] In 2018, she had created the city's first LGBTQ advisory board, which included entertainer Miss Lawrence and activist Feroza Syed.

[27] When Atlanta experienced riots in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Bottoms condemned those involved,[28][29] but later expressed optimism while speaking to demonstrators at a protest, saying, "There is something better on the other side of this.

[40] After Biden promised during a March 2020 CNN debate to choose a woman as his running mate, Politico reported her as a possible pick.

[41] In June, CNN reported that Bottoms was among his top four choices, along with Representative Val Demings and Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren.

[44] After Biden's election, Bottoms was mentioned as a possible candidate for United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

[46] In June 2022, it was announced that President Joe Biden had picked Bottoms to replace Cedric Richmond as the director of the Office of Public Liaison.

[49][50] Bottoms' family history can be traced back five generations to Shepherd Peek, a freedman from a plantation near Crawfordville, who may have served in the Georgia state legislature during Reconstruction.

[10][13] In October 1994, she married Derek W. Bottoms at Ben Hill United Methodist Church in Atlanta.