The Hon. Vince G. Chhabria is a judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Chhabria was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama on July 25, 2013, and confirmed by the United States Senate on March 5, 2014. He filled a seat vacated by the Hon. Susan Illston.
Prior to his appointment, Chhabria was a deputy city attorney with the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, a position to which he was named 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.
Chhabria earned a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1991. He spent the next few years working as a staff member to Lynn C. Woolsey, a member of the United States House of Representatives, before completing a J.D. at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, in 1998.
After graduating from law school, Chhabria began his legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. Charles R. Breyer of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He served in that capacity until 1999, at which time he began 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 into private practice. 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 private practice, handling criminal defense litigation as an associate at Covington & Burling from 2002 to 2004.
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.