Since his appointment to the bench in 2016, Judge Kim has routinely presided over many civil
cases under the district’s voluntary consent and direct assignment programs. He has conducted
several bench and jury trials involving federal misdemeanors, trademark and copyright
disputes, civil rights statutes like the ADA and 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and tort cases by removal or
under the FTCA. As the presiding judge for all purposes, he has also decided numerous
dispositive and trial motions as well, including in class actions of all types, tax controversies,
product liability suits, Title VII employment disputes, and many others. Judge Kim maintains a
busy ADR calendar too, with a higher than 75 percent success rate as a neutral judicial
settlement officer. And drawing on his experience in digital risk management consulting, Judge
Kim regularly resolves complex discovery disputes involving computer forensic examinations,
source code reviews, data spoliation, and ESI workflows.
Judge Kim is active in court governance and bench-bar organizations. He is a longstanding
member (and former chair) of the Ninth Circuit’s information technology committee and a
member of the Ninth Circuit’s judicial security committee. He has served on the board of
governors and judicial advisory council for the Association of Business Trial Lawyers (Los
Angeles), as well as on the executive committee for the litigation section of the Los Angeles
County Bar Association. He is also a sustaining member on the judicial council for NAPABA and
volunteers in working groups for the Sedona Conference. In 2021, he was elected to lifetime
membership in the American Law Institute.
Before taking the bench, Judge Kim Judge worked in both public and private sectors. He was a
civil litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson, LLP and a criminal prosecutor handling trials and
appeals in the Los Angeles United States Attorney’s Office. Afterward, he was a managing
director for Stroz Friedberg, LLC, specializing in law and technology matters. Judge Kim also
clerked for Judge Stephen V. Wilson on the same court in the Central District of California
where he now serves and for Judge Sidney R. Thomas on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit. He received his B.A., with special distinction, from the University of Oklahoma, where
he was the Carl Albert Award recipient for the most distinguished graduate in the college of arts
and sciences. He earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center,
where he was an editor of the Georgetown Law Journal and inducted to the order of the coif.
Judge Kim keeps chambers in Los Angeles.
