Judge Paul Watford is an Orange County native, and is one of two active African-American judges on the 9^th Circuit. Before becoming a judge, he was a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in Los Angeles, where he specialized in appellate work. Earlier he served as a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. After law school Watford served as a law clerk to 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, who is now Chief Judge of the circuit, and to U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Watford holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and a J.D. from the UCLA, where he was an editor of the UCLA Law Review.

Judge Jacqueline Nguyen is the first Vietnamese American and the first Asian-Pacific woman to serve on a federal appeals court. She is a former federal prosecutor, Superior Court judge, and served on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California before joining the Ninth Circuit. The daughter of a South Vietnamese army officer, she fled Vietnam with her family in 1975. She helped her mother clean dental offices and worked at family doughnut shops in Los Angeles before winning a scholarship to Occidental College and later attending UCLA Law School.

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