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Meet the Judges of the Ninth Circuit

Bianca Garcia | Published on 6/8/2022




Learn more & register here: https://www.njchs.org/meet-the-judges-of-the-ninth-circuit/

MEET THE PANELISTS

Hon. Consuelo M. Callahan, Circuit Judge, was born in Palo Alto, CA and graduated from Stanford University, earning her law degree at McGeorge School of Law and her L.L.M. at University of Virginia Law School. She began her lifelong career in public service in California as a deputy city attorney, followed by 10 years as a deputy district attorney and supervisory district attorney. Judge Callahan joined the State Court bench in 1986, first as a Commissioner in Municipal Court, then as a Superior Court Judge, and finally as an Associate Justice on the California Court of Appeal, before she was appointed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush in 2003. Her chambers are in Sacramento.

Hon. Daniel A. Bress, Circuit Judge, is a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with chambers in San Francisco. A native of Gilroy, California, Judge Bress graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and received his J.D. degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Virginia Law Review. Following law school, Judge Bress clerked for the Honorable J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the Honorable Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States. Judge Bress was then a lawyer private practice, first at Munger Tolles & Olson and later at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where he was a litigation partner. Judge Bress has also taught law school courses at the University of Virginia School of Law and the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University. Judge Bress was nominated and confirmed to the Ninth Circuit in 2019.

Honorable Gabriel P. Sanchez, Circuit Judge, was nominated by President Joseph R. Biden in September 2021 and confirmed by the United States Senate on January 12, 2022. His chambers are located in San Francisco, California. Prior to his appointment to the Ninth Circuit, Judge Sanchez was an Associate Justice on the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District. Before joining the bench, Judge Sanchez served as Deputy Legal Affairs Secretary to California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr, Deputy Attorney General for the California Department of Justice, and as an associate for Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP at its San Francisco and Los Angeles offices. Judge Sanchez received his B.A. from Yale University (1998), M.Phil. from Cambridge University (2000), and J.D. from Yale Law School (2005). He was a Fulbright scholar in 1999 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he surveyed and wrote about presidential electoral campaign politics. Following law school, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Richard A. Paez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Molly C. Dwyer is the Clerk of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the largest federal court in the nation. She has been with the Ninth Circuit since 1988, where she began as a staff attorney, and she has also served as the Director of the Staff Attorneys’ Office and as Chief Deputy Clerk. She was promoted to Clerk in 2008 after 20 years of serving in essentially every area of the court. A native of Buffalo, New York, Molly received her J.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law, after receiving an M.A. in international history from the London School of Economics.

Asim Bhansali is a founder and partner at the San Francisco law firm Kwun Bhansali Lazarus LLP. He has spent 25 years as a trial and appellate lawyer representing Fortune 100 companies, new market entrants, and individuals. Asim’s cases have spanned patent, antitrust, trade-secret, class-action, and contract disputes, representing both plaintiffs and defendants.