The Hon. Edmond E. Chang
Chicago, IL
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois
University of Michigan, B.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering
Northwestern University School of Law, Juris Doctor
Edmond E. Chang has served on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois since January 2011. At that time, he was the youngest then-serving federal judge in the nation. He is the first Asian-Pacific American Article III federal judge in Illinois.
Before joining the judiciary, Judge Chang was an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago. After prosecuting a wide variety of federal offenses, he was promoted to Deputy Chief of the General Crimes Section and, later, to the Chief of Appeals of the criminal division. During his tenure as Chief of Appeals, Judge Chang also was selected to serve on the Appellate Chiefs Working Group of the Department of Justice, as well as the Seventh Circuit Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions Committee, on which he still serves.
From 1997 to 1999, Judge Chang practiced employment law at Sidley Austin. Before private practice, Judge Chang served two federal judicial clerkships, with Judge James L. Ryan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and then-Chief Judge Marvin E. Aspen of the Northern District of Illinois.
Since 1996, Judge Chang has taught Civil Rights Litigation as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the Civil Rights chapter in the American Bar Association Section of Litigation’s treatise on Business and Commercial Litigation in Federal Courts. Before joining the bench, Judge Chang served on the board of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, a public-interest bar association. He also received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Public Interest Law Initiative, a nonprofit group that promotes pro bono and public interest legal service.
In 2018, Judge Chang began service on the Criminal Law Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Also, since 2008, Judge Chang has served on the Seventh Circuit Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions Committee, and now chairs one of its four subcommittees.
Judge Chang earned his law degree with honors and Order of the Coif from Northwestern, where he served on the Northwestern University Law Review. He earned with honors a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.
