The Hon. Nancy A. de la Peña is a judge for the Santa Cruz County Superior Court in California. She was elected to the bench on November 3, 2020.
Prior to her election, de la Peña spent five years as assistant county counsel for the Office of County Counsel in Santa Cruz. During her tenure there, she assisted the Family & Children Services Division in child abuse cases. Before that, she spent thirty years as a defense attorney at Biggam, Christensen & Minslof, a law firm contracted as the county’s public defender’s office.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1979. She spent the next several years living in San Francisco before completing a J.D. at the University of California, Davis School of Law in 1985.
De la Peña, whose father is from Argentina, was born in New Mexico and raised in Los Angeles. She and her wife, Janet, have two adult children.