Lucy Koh

Lucy Haeran Koh (born August 7, 1968) is an American lawyer serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Koh previously served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California from 2010 to 2021. She also served as a California state court judge of the Santa Clara County Superior Court from 2008 to 2010. She is the first Korean American woman to serve on a federal appellate court in the United States.

Born on August 7, 1968, in Washington, D.C., Koh was the first member of her family to be born in the United States. Her mother, a refugee from North Korea, had escaped the country at the age of ten after walking two weeks to South Korea. Her father was a veteran of the Korean War, where he fought Communist forces.

Koh spent most of her childhood in Mississippi, where her mother was an academic at Alcorn State University. She also spent parts of her young life in Maryland and Oklahoma. In 1986, Koh graduated from Norman High School in 1986 in Norman, Oklahoma. She attended Harvard College, where she was awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship and graduated in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in social studies. She then attended Harvard Law School, where she was a semi-finalist in the Ames Moot Court Competition and graduated in 1993 with a Juris Doctor.

From 1993 to 1994, Koh worked for the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary as a Women's Law and Public Policy Fellow. From 1994 to 1997, Koh worked for the United States Department of Justice, first as a Special Counsel in the Office of Legislative Affairs (1994–1996) and then as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Attorney General (1996–1997).

From 1997 to 2000, Koh served as an assistant United States attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. From 2000 to 2002, she worked as a senior associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a Palo Alto, California law firm. From 2002 to 2008, Koh worked as a litigation partner at the Silicon Valley office of the law firm McDermott Will & Emery representing technology companies in patent, trade secret and commercial civil matters.

In January 2008, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Koh a judge on the Santa Clara County Superior Court, a position she held until 2010 when she became a federal judge.

On January 20, 2010, President Barack Obama nominated Koh on the recommendation of California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California vacated by Judge Ronald M. Whyte, who assumed senior status in 2009. On February 11, 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on her nomination. On March 4, 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee favorably reported her nomination. The Senate confirmed Koh by a 90–0 vote on June 7, 2010. She received her commission on June 9, 2010. Her service as the district court judge was terminated on December 15, 2021 when she was elevated to the court of appeals.

As a district judge, Koh presided over litigation including Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., In re High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, FTC v. Qualcomm (finding antitrust liability for conduct in licensing standard-essential patents, later reversed), and multi-district litigation, including the Yahoo and Anthem data breaches and Apple and Google privacy litigation.