The Hon. Tanya S. Chutkan is a district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama on December 19, 2013. Chutkan was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 4, 2014, and received her judicial commission the following day.
Prior to her nomination, she practiced for twelve years at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, LLP. At the firm, Chutkan specialized in antitrust class action plaintiffs and complex state and federal litigation.
Chutkan received a B.A. in economics from George Washington University in 1983. She then completed a J.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, Carey Law School, in 1987. Chutkan sat as associate editor of the Law Review and was a Legal Writing Fellow.
After graduating from law school, she began her legal career in private practice. During that time, she was associated with Hogan & Hartson (1987 to 1990) and Donovan, Leisure, Rogovin, Huge & Schiller (1990 to 1991). Chutkan then joined the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia as a trial attorney and later a supervisor, remaining there for eleven years until returning to private practice.
She was a member of the Steering Committee for the Criminal Law and Individual Rights Section of the District of Columbia Bar. Chutkan has also served as a frequent lecturer on trial techniques and a faculty member at the Harvard Law School Trial Advocacy Workshop.
Chutkan was born in Kingston, Jamaica. Her father, brother, and younger sister are all physicians, and her mother was a dancer at the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. Her husband, Hon. Peter A. Krauthamer, presided as a judge for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (2012 to 2023). The couple has two sons.