The Hon. William H. Alsup is a senior judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He was nominated to the bench by former President Bill Clinton on March 24, 1999, and confirmed by the United States Senate on July 30, 1999. Alsup assumed senior status on January 21, 2021.
Over the course of his judicial career, Alsup gained national attention after he granted a temporary injunction halting President Donald Trump’s rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) on January 9, 2018. Then, on November 17, 2022, Alsup ruled in favor of 200,000 student loan borrowers in a class action lawsuit. The borrowers claimed they were defrauded by for-profit colleges and universities, which misled students about job prospects, credit transferability, and salary expectations.
Alsup earned a B.S. in mathematics from Mississippi State University in 1967. He then continued his studies, completing a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an M.P.P. from Harvard University in 1971.
After graduating from law school, he began his legal career as a judicial law clerk to Justice William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court of the United States. He served in that capacity until 1972, at which time he entered into private practice at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco.
Then, in 1978, Alsup took a leave of absence from the firm in order to serve as assistant to the United States Solicitor General in the United States Department of Justice. He served there for two years, eventually returning to Morrison & Foerster in 1980. He practiced at Morrison & Foerster for the next eighteen years, but he briefly left to serve a short stint as special counsel in the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice in 1998. Later that year, he returned, once again, to Morrison & Foerster. He practiced there until his nomination to the bench in 1999.
He is a recipient of the Tara L. Riedley Barristers Choice Award from the Bar Association of San Francisco (2013) as well as the Award of Recognition from Lewis and Clark Law School (2013).
Alsup was born in Jackson, Mississippi. While not presiding over cases, he enjoys exploring the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He has written two historical accounts about the region. The first examines the 1864 expedition of the California Geological Survey, and the second investigates the 1933 disappearance of mountaineer Walter “Pete” Starr.