Skokie-Born Wilmette Resident Nancy Maldonado To Become Federal Judge

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed Nancy Maldonado as a federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois.

The Skokie native and Wilmette resident is set to become the first Latina federal district judge in Illinois history, according to a joint statement from Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.

"Not only does she have the qualifications, integrity, and judgment to serve with distinction, but she will also bring important demographic diversity to the bench as the first Hispanic woman to serve as an Article III federal judge in the state of Illinois," the senators said.

The Senate on Tuesday voted 53-45 in favor of her nomination, with four Republican senators joining 49 Democrats. One senator from each party did not vote.

At a nomination hearing in May before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Maldonado acknowledged the support of her family and friends, including her late father, who she said moved to Utah from Puerto Rico as a teen with a fourth-grade education and worked in copper mines before coming to Chicago and starting a food business.

"Together with my mother, a registered nurse, my parents created a home filled with love, faith, high expectations and respect, where my siblings and I were able to thrive," Maldonado told Senates. Our parents instilled in us the belief that anything we set our mind to, an invaluable gift."

Maldonado received a law degree from Columbia Law School in 2001 spent two years clerking in Chicago federal court for now-retired U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo, the first Latino judge in the Northern District of Illinois. In 2003, she joined the law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland, becoming a partner in 2010.

During her nearly two decades in private practice, she has specialized in plaintiff-side employment, civil rights and fraud litigation, according to committee chair Durbin, who noted that Maldonado had served the people of Cook County and the state of Illinois in a variety of capacities.

"In the early 2010s, she served as special assistant state's attorney to Cook County to investigate fraud by a whistleblower," Durbin said. "In 2018, the Illinois attorney general appointed her to serve as a consent decree monitor in two employment discrimination cases, and last year, the Illinois attorney general also appointed Ms. Maldonado to serve as special assistant attorney general to investigate consumer fraud."

According to her nomination questionnaire, Maldonado has provided pro bono assistance to local nonprofits including working on the initial bylaws for La Casa Norte, an organization serving families and youth facing homelessness, and setting up the nonprofit Chicago Yoga Project, which uses yoga classes and yoga teacher training to promote nonviolence.

Maldonado also taught weekly religious education classes to first-graders at Saint Nicholas Parish in Evanston from 2014 to 2018 and continues to serve as a substitute, according to the questionnaire, in which she said she plans to continue leading yoga classes on weekends and serving on community boards, "as time and ethical rules allow."

During her nomination hearing in May, Maldonado was asked if she planned to continue teaching yoga after becoming a judge.

"One judge, who's currently sitting, suggested I do a class for judges," she said. "The 'judge's gym.'"