Koh, Lucy H., 1968-

Lucy Haeran Koh (born August 7, 1968) is a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and a nominee to be a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She is the first U.S. district court judge of Korean descent and the first female Korean American federal judge in the United States.

Born 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 earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College in social studies in 1990 and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1993.

From 1993 until 1994, Koh worked for the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary as a Women's Law and Public Policy Fellow. From 1994 until 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 United States Deputy Attorney General (1996–1997).[6] From 1997 until 2000, Koh served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Office of the United States Attorney for the Central District of California.

From 2000 until 2002, she worked as a Senior Associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a Palo Alto, California law firm. From 2002 until 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 becoming a U.S. District Judge in 2010.

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 March 4, 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to move her nomination to the full Senate.[8] The Senate confirmed Koh in a 90–0 vote on June 7, 2010.[9] She received her commission on June 9, 2010.

On February 25, 2016, President Obama nominated Koh to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, to the seat vacated by Judge Harry Pregerson, who took senior status on December 11, 2015. On July 13, 2016, a hearing on her nomination was held before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. On September 15, 2016, her nomination was reported out of committee by a vote of 13–7. Her nomination expired on January 3, 2017, with the end of the 114th Congress. President Donald Trump appointed Daniel P. Collins to the same seat in 2019.

On September 8, 2021, President Joe Biden announced his intention to renominate Koh to be a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On September 20, 2021, her nomination was sent to the Senate. President Biden nominated Koh to the seat to be vacated by Judge Richard Paez, upon confirmation of a successor. On October 6, 2021, a hearing on her nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. On October 28, 2021, her nomination was reported out of committee by a 13–9 vote. Her nomination is now pending before the full United States Senate. If confirmed, Koh would be the first Korean-American woman to serve as a federal appellate judge and the second Asian Pacific American woman to serve on the Ninth Circuit from California, after Jacqueline Nguyen.