Judge Kim Nguyen: Professional Background and Legal Expertise

The Hon. Kim Nguyen is a judge for the Los Angeles County Superior Court in California. She was elected to the bench on November 8, 2016. She filled the vacancy created by the retirement of the Hon. Elden Fox (Ret.).

Nguyen, who is of Vietnamese descent, was the only active Vietnamese judge on the Los Angeles Superior Court when she was elected to the bench.

Judge Nguyen received her B.A. from the University of California in 1997. She went on to earn her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2000.

After graduating from law school, Nguyen became an associate at the law firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown, and Enersen in 2000. She practiced for the firm until starting a clerkship for the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit in 2002. Nguyen completed her clerkship in 2003 and joined the Burbank law firm of Horvitz and Levy as an associate in that same year. After five years with the firm, Nguyen became a writs attorney for the Court of Appeals where she practiced from 2008 to 2014. She then joined the California Department of Justice's Office of the Attorney General as a deputy attorney general. She was serving in that capacity at the time of her election to the Superior Court in 2016. During her 16 years as a lawyer, Nguyen's areas of practice included complex civil law, torts, constitutional law, criminal law, family law, and juvenile dependency law.

Judge Nguyen, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Vietnam in 1975, served as a volunteer for the Asian American Advancing Justice organization where she provided pro bono legal assistance to immigrants seeking their U.S. citizenships.

Some of her many memberships have included the Vietnamese American Bar Association of Southern California, the Long Beach Democratic Club, the Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the California Coalition of Law Enforcement Associations, and the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, just to name a few.