Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (retired)
Judge Janice Rogers Brown was confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 8, 2005. From 1996 to 2005, she was Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. Previously, she served as Associate Justice of the Third District Court of Appeals in Sacramento and as the Legal Affairs Secretary to Governor Pete Wilson.
Prior to joining Governor Wilson’s senior staff, Judge Brown was an associate at Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor. Earlier, she served as Deputy Secretary and General Counsel for California’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency (BT&H), working primarily with business regulatory departments. She came to BT&H after eight years in the Attorney General’s Office, where she worked in both the criminal appellate and civil trial divisions. She also worked for two years for the Legislative Counsel and previously served as an adjunct professor at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law.
Judge Brown currently serves on the Board of Regents of Pepperdine University and is a member of the Board of the Coolidge Foundation. She also serves as the Darling Foundation Jurist-in-Residence and a visiting professor at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.
Judge Brown is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law and California State University, Sacramento. In 2004, Judge Brown received a Master of Laws degree in Judicial Process after completing the Graduate Program for Judges at the University of Virginia School of Law.
The recipient of honorary doctorates from Pepperdine University, Ave Maria School of Law, Catholic University’s Columbia School of Law, and Southwestern School of Law, Brown received the UCLA School of Law Alumnus of the Year award in 1998 and UCLA’s 2004 Award for Excellence in Public Service. She has been honored with the Jurisprudence Award of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. Judge Brown retired from the bench in 2017.