Amul Thapar

Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

Judge Amul is a United States Sixth Circuit Judge, who has the privilege of being the first South Asian Article III judge. President George W. Bush nominated Amul to the district court on May 24, 2007, and President Donald J. Trump nominated him to the Sixth Circuit on March 21, 2017.

Before becoming a judge, Judge Thapar served as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. While United States Attorney, Judge Thapar was appointed to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (“AGAC”) and chaired the AGAC’s Controlled Substances and Asset Forfeiture subcommittee. He also served on the Terrorism and National Security subcommittee, the Violent Crime subcommittee, and Child Exploitation working group. Judge Thapar has also worked for the law firms of Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., and Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Cincinnati, Ohio, and served as an Assistant United States Attorney in both the Southern District of Ohio and the District of Columbia. Between 1994 and 1997, Judge Thapar served as a law clerk to the Honorable S. Arthur Spiegel and the Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones. In 2015, Judge Thapar received the Daniel K. Inouye NAPABA Trailblazer Award. That same year, he also received a Green Bag award for an opinion he wrote. He teaches at the University of Virginia School of Law, Vanderbilt Law School, and the Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law.

Judge Thapar received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.