Kathleen Williams is a former prosecutor and a former criminal defense attorney who has been a federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida since August 2011.
After law school, Judge Williams worked briefly in private practice and then worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Florida handling complex prosecutions of drug cartels. She then joined Morgan Lewis & Bockius as an associate handling white-collar criminal defense matters.
Williams later served as Chief Assistant Federal Public Defender for the Southern District of Florida and later took the helm as the Federal Public Defender for the Southern District of Florida where she managed and directed the work of 48 Assistant Federal Defenders, 16 investigators, and more than 50 support staff. In 1999, at the request of the chief judge of the Eleventh Circuit, Williams became the Acting Federal Public Defender for the Middle District of Florida while continuing to serve as the Defender for the Southern District of Florida.
EDUCATION: Duke University, B.A.; University of Miami School of Law, J.D.