Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto was appointed as a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York in July 2008, after serving as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of New York since July 2004, in the same court as trailblazer United States Magistrate Judge Marilyn Dolan Go.  At the time of Judge Matsumoto’s appointment as a district judge, she was the second female Asian American Article III judge appointed in the United States (following trailblazer United States District Judge Susan Oki Mollway of Hawaii), and was the first female Asian American Article III judge appointed in the continental United States.

Judge Matsumoto graduated with high honors from the University of California at Berkeley, and from the Georgetown University Law Center.  Following her graduation from law school, Judge Matsumoto was a litigation associate in Seattle, Washington.  Thereafter, she joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, where she served for over twenty years, and was appointed as a Deputy Chief, First Deputy Chief and Chief of the Civil Division.

Judge Matsumoto was an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School, where she taught legal research and writing, New York University School of Law, where she taught a government civil litigation clinic and seminar, and Columbia Law School where she co-taught Asian Americans and the Law, a course developed by United States Circuit Judge Denny Chin and Professor Thomas Lee of Fordham Law School. She also has served as a trustee and vice chair of the board of the Federal Bar Council, and as a member of the Second Circuit Courts Committee and President of the Inn of Court of the Federal Bar Council; a member of the Judiciary Committee, the Federal Courts Committee, the Nominating Committee, Chair of the Honors Committee and a member of the Board of the New York City Bar Association; Vice Chair of the Mayor’s Committee on City Marshals; a member of the American Bar Association Standards Review Committee; the National Conference of Bar Examiners Civil Procedure Drafting Group; and a member of the United States Judicial Conference Committee on the Administration of the Magistrate Judges System.

As a longtime member of the Asian American Bar Association of New York and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, Judge Matsumoto has participated in numerous historical reenactments led by United States Circuit Judge Denny Chin and Kathy Hirata Chin. Judge Matsumoto was honored to receive NAPABA’s Trailblazer Award in 2009.