Royce Lamberth

Royce C. Lamberth was appointed United States District Judge for the District of Columbia on Nov. 16, 1987. He assumed senior status in 2013.

Prior to his appointment to the bench, Judge Lamberth served as chief of the Civil Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia for nearly 10 years. He joined that office as an assistant United States attorney in 1974. A native of San Antonio, Texas, he attended the University of Texas for both his bachelor’s and law school degrees. He served as a captain in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the United States Army from 1968 to 1974. After serving in Vietnam, he served in the Litigation Division of the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Army at the Pentagon from 1971 to 1974.

Judge Lamberth was appointed in 1995 by Chief Justice William Rehnquist as the presiding judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. His served until 2002.

Judge Lamberth is a former chairman of the Professional Ethics Committee of the Federal Bar Association, which drafted the Federal Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct for Federal Lawyers. He also served as a member of the Committee on Automation and Technology of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 1990 to 1996. From 2003 to 2008, and from 2013 to the present, Judge Lamberth served as chairman of the Committee on Inter-Circuit Assignments of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

He became a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States in May 2008. A former chairman of the Federal Litigation Section of the Federal Bar Association, he is a member of the American Bar Association, the Bar Association of the District of Columbia, and the District of Columbia Bar. Judge Lamberth is married to the former Janis K. Jost of San Antonio.