Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu was appointed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on March 1, 2010. Before joining the Court, she served as Clinical Professor of Law on the U.C. Hastings faculty, and as Associate Professor of Law on the Golden Gate University Law School faculty. She has presided over numerous 42 U.S.C. § 1983 lawsuits, settlement conferences and discovery disputes.
Judge Ryu began her legal career with McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen in San Francisco before joining an Oakland-based firm specializing in class actions. She later formed her own civil rights firm, Ryu, Dickey & Larkin.
She has been honored as a California Lawyer of the Year in Employment Law. She is also the recipient of the Asian American Bar Association's Joe Morozumi Award for Exceptional Legal Advocacy, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Trailblazer Award, and the Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching. She co-designed and served on the faculty of a national training institute on class actions, and has written and lectured extensively in the areas of employment law, discovery, attorneys' fees, class actions, and professionalism in lawyering.
Judge Ryu graduated with honors from Yale University, and received her law degree from U.C. Berkeley Law School, where she was a founder of the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law and Justice.