The Hon. Vince G. Chhabria is a district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama on July 25, 2013, filling a seat vacated by the Hon. Susan Illston.
Chhabria earned a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1991. He then completed a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 1998.
He began his legal career as a law clerk for the Hon. Charles R. Breyer of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in 1998. The following year, he completed another clerkship, this time with the Hon. James R. Browning of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Then, in 2001, he entered the private sector. He accepted a position as an associate at Keker & Van Nest. He worked there briefly, quickly leaving to clerk for Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States. After his clerkship, he returned to the private sector, working as an associate at Covington & Burling from 2002 to 2004.
Chhabria joined the Office of the City Attorney of San Francisco in 2005. During his eight-year tenure there, he served as a deputy city attorney for government litigation as well as the co-chief of appellate litigation. He was responsible for representing the city in the defense of its health insurance law as well as the adoption rights of same-sex couples.
He was named Young Public Lawyer of the Year (2008) by the International Municipal Lawyers Association and California Lawyer of the Year (2009) by The Recorder. He has also been a member of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.
He was born in San Francisco, California to a father from Mumbai and a mother from Quebec. As such, he was the first Indian American to serve as an Article III judge on a federal court in California.