Hon. Nannette Jolivette Brown

Chief Judge

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana

Chief Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown was nominated to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana by President Barack Obama and after the United States Senate confirmed her nomination by unanimous consent, she began active service on October 5, 2011. She was elevated to Chief Judge on May 25, 2018. Just prior to her appointment to the United States District Court, Judge Brown was Deputy Mayor and City Attorney for the City of New Orleans. Prior to that, she was a Partner with the firm of Chaffe McCall, LLP, where she had a varied practice in commercial and environmental litigation, as well as in real estate law and other transactional matters.

Judge Brown graduated from Tulane Law School with a Juris Doctor. She later served as a teaching fellow at Tulane Law School’s Environmental Law Clinic while pursuing an LLM in Energy and Environment. She also served as associate professor at Southern University Law Center and clinical professor at Loyola Law School, where she helped establish the Mediation Section of the Loyola College of Law Clinic & Center for Social Justice. Judge Brown has been honored with the Sarah T. Hughes Civil Rights Award by the National Federal Bar Association and the Ernest Morial Award by the Louis A. Martinet Legal Society. She has also been honored with the National Bar Association’s Women Lawyers Division Excellence in the Judiciary Award.