ACS Presents: A Conversation with Judge Theodore Chuang

Theodore D. Chuang serves as a United States District Judge for the District of Maryland and sits at the United States Courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland. Judge Chuang was nominated by President Obama on September 25, 2013 and received his commission on May 2, 2014. 

Prior to his appointment, Judge Chuang served as Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2011 to 2014 and as Associate General Counsel of DHS from 2009 to 2011. In 2009, he served as Chief Investigative Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce. From 2007 to 2009, he served as Deputy Chief Investigative Counsel for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. From 2004 to 2007, Judge Chuang was in private practice in Washington, D.C. at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, LLP.

From 1998 to 2004, Judge Chuang served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. From 1995 to 1998, he served as a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, in Washington, D.C. Judge Chuang began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Throughout his career, Judge Chuang has been active in professional and community organizations. He has served on the Board of Governors of the District of Columbia Bar and is a member of the American Law Institute. He has also served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, a legal services organization serving low income, limited English proficient Asian Americans and immigrants in Maryland and the Washington, D.C. region; as President of the Asian American Lawyers Association of Massachusetts, from which he received the 2018 Founders Award; and as President-Elect of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of the Greater Washington, D.C. Area, from which he received the 2019 Pioneer Award.

Judge Chuang graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1994, where he was an Editor of the Harvard Law Review and a Finalist in the Ames Moot Court Competition, and received his B.A. summa cum laude in Economics from Harvard University in 1991. He was born in Media, Pennsylvania and grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts.