Biography
Pamela Chen is a federal District Court Judge in the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn. She was nominated by President Obama in January 2013, and sworn in on March 19, 2013. Between September 1998 and March 2013, Judge Chen served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, except for a brief period in 2008, when she served as Deputy Commissioner for Enforcement in the New York State Division of Human Rights. At the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Judge Chen was the Chief of the Civil Rights Section, Deputy Chief of the Public Integrity Section and Chief of Civil Rights Litigation. During her tenure in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Judge Chen supervised the investigation and prosecution of matters involving human trafficking, hate crimes and color of law violations. She also prosecuted cases involving gang violence, drug trafficking, civil rights crimes and terrorism. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Ms. Chen was a Senior Trial Attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Ms. Chen began her legal career at the law firm of Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. and also worked at Asbill, Junkin, Myers and Buffone in Washington, D.C. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan and a J.D. degree from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she was an associate editor for The Tax Lawyer.