If confirmed by the Senate, Nguyen would fill a new judgeship authorized to the court, effective Jan. 21, 2009. The seat has remained vacant since then.
Nguyen, 45, had been previously appointed by Obama to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. She received her judicial commission on December 4, 2009, becoming the first Vietnamese-American to serve as a federal district judge.
Prior to coming onto the federal bench, Nguyen has served as judge of of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, 2002 to 2009, and as a federal prosecutor in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, from 1995 to 2002. While an assistant U.S. attorney, she was promoted to the post of deputy chief of the general crimes section and won the director’s award from the Department of Justice for superior performance. Judge Nguyen began her legal career at the law firm of Musick, Peeler & Garrett LLP, where she was a litigation associate from 1991 to 1994.
Born in Dalat, Vietnam, Nguyen and her family fled the country in 1975 as Saigon was in the process of falling during the latter stages of the Vietnam War. Her family was placed at a refugee camp in Camp Pendleton, California, where they lived in a tent city for over one month before settling in the Los Angeles area.
Nguyen received her A.B. from Occidental College in 1987, and her J.D. from University of California at Los Angeles School of Law in 1991. She has been a member of numerous Asian-American bar groups, including the Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the Vietnamese American Bar Association of Orange County, the Southern California ChineseLawyers Association, the Korean American Bar Association and the Japanese American Bar Association. She was also a board member of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles.
