U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani

Indira Talwani is of mixed racial background. Her father immigrated from India, making her of Indian descent on his side, and her mother immigrated from Germany, giving her German descent. She was born in the United States and is recognized as the first Asian American federal judge in Massachusetts.

Indira Talwani, born October 6, 1960, in Englewood, New Jersey, is a U.S. District Judge for the District of Massachusetts, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014. She was the first Asian American federal judge in Massachusetts and the first of Asian descent in the First Circuit, which includes Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico, and Rhode Island. Her parents immigrated from India and Germany.

Talwani graduated cum laude with a B.A. from Radcliffe College (Harvard) in 1982 and earned her J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law in 1988, where she was selected for the Order of the Coif and served as an articles editor for the Industrial Relations Law Journal. She began her career as a law clerk for Judge Stanley A. Weigel in the Northern District of California (1988–1989), then worked as an associate (1989–1995) and partner (1996–1999) at Altshuler Berzon LLP in San Francisco, focusing on labor and employment law. From 1999 to 2014, she was a partner at Segal Roitman LLP in Boston, handling civil litigation, including employment disputes and class actions. She’s a senior editor of the American Bar Association’s treatise on the Family and Medical Leave Act and has lectured on employment law.

Nominated on September 24, 2013, to replace Judge Mark L. Wolf, Talwani was confirmed by the Senate on May 8, 2014, by a 94–0 vote and received her commission on May 12, 2014. Based at the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse in Boston, she’s known for cases like sentencing Felicity Huffman to 14 days in prison in the Varsity Blues scandal and issuing a 2025 ruling blocking the Trump administration from ending humanitarian parole for over 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, citing flawed legal reasoning by the Department of Homeland Security. Critics, including some X posts, have questioned her impartiality in immigration cases, pointing to her 2018 comments criticizing ICE courthouse arrests, though no formal bias has been established.

Talwani’s judicial approach emphasizes mediation, case-by-case discovery rulings, and clear justification for sealing documents. She’s respected for her litigation experience but faces scrutiny from conservative voices over immigration rulings. 17GEN4.com