Judge Pamela K. Chen (she/her)
Board Chair

Pamela K. Chen is a federal district judge in the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.  She was nominated to the federal bench in January 2013 by President Barack Obama, and sworn in on March 19, 2013. 

Before joining the bench, Judge Chen was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, except for a brief period in 2008, when she served as a Deputy Commissioner in the New York State Division of Human Rights.  During her tenure in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Judge Chen investigated and prosecuted cases involving terrorism, gang violence, drug trafficking, hate crimes, official misconduct, and human trafficking.  Between 1991 and 1998, Judge Chen was a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Judge Chen began her legal career at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. 

Judge Chen received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and her law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center.