The Hon. Timothy J. Kelly is a district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He was nominated to the bench by former President Donald Trump on June 7, 2017. Kelly was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 5, 2017, and received his judicial commission three days later.
Prior to his nomination, he was chief counsel for National Security and Senior Crime Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley since 2013. Before that, he was an assistant attorney general, assigned to the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice (2007 to 2013) and an assistant United States attorney with the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (2003 to 2007), where he prosecuted violent crimes, drug trafficking, and white-collar crimes.
Kelly received an A.B. from Duke University in 1991. He then completed a J.D. at Georgetown University Law Center in 1997. While a law student, Kelly was senior associate editor of the American Criminal Law Review and represented indigent defendants in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia through the law school’s Criminal Justice Clinic.
After graduating from law school, he began his legal career as an associate at Arnold & Porter, where he handled complex product liability cases in state and federal court. In 1999, Kelly practiced on loan from the firm as an associate at Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia. He then began a yearlong tenure in 2001 as a law clerk to the Hon. Ronald L. Buckwalter with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Kelly served as a barrister of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court and is a past treasurer of the Individual Rights Section Steering Committee of the District of Columbia Bar.
He was born in Glen Cove, New York. Kelly is a married father of two.