The Hon. Pedro V. Castillo is a magistrate for the United States District Court for the Central District of California. He was appointed to the bench on January 24, 2020, filling the vacancy created by the retirement of the Hon. Suzanne H. Segal.
Castillo received a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in 1988. He then completed a J.D. at the University of Arizona College of Law in 1991.
Prior to his appointment, Castillo spent more than twenty-seven years as a deputy federal public defender for the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Central District in Los Angeles, where he represented indigent individuals in criminal proceedings in all stages of their cases from arraignment to appeal. Castillo also participated in the Central District Court’s Substance Abuse Treatment and Reentry program and was a member of the District’s Conviction and Sentence Alternatives.
He has also been involved with the Midnight Mission in Los Angeles and the Ventura Mission in Oxnard. In addition, Castillo served as a Council on Legal Educational Opportunity Fellow at the Summer Institute at the University of Utah College of Law, completing a program designed to help low-income minority students through the process of enrolling and succeeding in law school.
Castillo was born in Mexico and raised in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles.