The Hon. Brian J. Buckelew is a judge for the Santa Clara County Superior Court in California. He was appointed to the bench by Governor Gavin Newsom on September 3, 2021, filling a vacancy created by the retirement of the Hon. Michele McKay McCoy.
Prior to his appointment, Buckelew was a deputy district attorney for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, a position to which he was named in 2013. During his tenure there, he supervised the Narcotics Unit and the Gang Unit. Before that, he was an assistant district attorney for the San Francisco County District Attorney’s Office (2007 to 2013), where he held assignments in the Gang Unit, the General Litigation Unit, the Misdemeanor Unit, and the Preliminary Unit.
Buckelew earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Arizona in 1995. He spent the next year working as assistant to the Special Counsel to President Bill Clinton at the White House before completing a J.D. at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 1999. As a law student, he externed for the Hon. John T. Noonan, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1997), and he sat as the associate editor of the Berkeley Journal of International Law.
After graduating from law school, Buckelew entered into private practice in Washington, D.C. He started as an associate at WilmerHale. Then, in 2000, he clerked for the Hon. Pasco M. Bowman, II of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He returned to private practice at the conclusion of his clerkship, handling complex civil litigation as an associate at Williams & Connolly (2001 to 2006).
Buckelew was a resident of San Jose, California, at the time of his appointment.
He is registered as a Democrat.