Tanya Sue Chutkan

As a girl growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, Tanya Sue Chutkan dreamed of becoming a dancer like her mother. When she first traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend college, she had no way of knowing that she would one day be at the center of a historic trial involving a former president of the United States. But, in 2023, U.S. District Court Judge Chutkan was randomly selected to hear the case involving Donald Trump’s role in attempts to overturn the 2020 election and in instigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Childhood and education

Tanya Chutkan grew up the privileged daughter of well-educated parents in Kingston. Winston Chutkan was a doctor, and Noelle Hill Chutkan was, by turns, an English teacher, dancer, and lawyer, but their roots were far more humble. Tanya Chutkan’s great-grandparents were brought to Jamaica from India as indentured servants, and her father was born on a sugar plantation. He won a scholarship to go to boarding school and told The New York Times in 2023 that it was at that school that he “wore shoes and experienced indoor plumbing for the first time.” Noelle Hill Chutkan was the director of the National Dance Theater Company in Jamaica as well as an accomplished squash and bridge player.

Chutkan is the eldest of the couple’s three children; her younger brother and sister both became doctors. At the private high school she attended, she was a solid, but not outstanding, student who wrote in the yearbook that her ambition was “to become a famous dancer.” She came to the United States for the first time at age 17 to attend George Washington University in Washington, D.C. While in school, she worked as a server in a campus cafeteria. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics, but she still dreamed of a career in the far more flamboyant world of professional dance, so after graduation she moved to New York.

The beginning of public service

While dancing never materialized as a career for Chutkan, her next endeavor—working as a volunteer for the failed 1984 presidential bid of Walter Mondale—seemed to help her find the direction the rest of her life would take. She became interested in government and law after her brief political foray and attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School, earning her law degree in 1987.

After graduation Chutkan moved back to Washington, D.C., working at a law firm specializing in somewhat arcane civil litigation. After several years Chutkan applied for a job as a public defender, a role that would have her representing often poor defendants charged with a variety of criminal offenses. She advanced quickly in the office, being promoted to lead attorney for sexual offenses and then homicides. In 2002, however, she returned to private practice and civil litigation. More than a decade later, at the suggestion of friends, Chutkan applied for an open judgeship on the U.S. District Court in Washington. In 2014 she was nominated to the seat by Pres. Barack Obama and was confirmed by the Senate, 95–0.

High-profile cases

Judge Chutkan brought years of trial experience to the bench and soon began to hear some controversial cases, including one involving the right of an undocumented woman to get an abortion and all the federal death penalty cases resulting from the Trump administration’s decision to resume the execution of people on death row.

In 2021 she heard the case in which former president Trump asserted executive privilege as a reason for not turning over documents to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attacks. In ruling that Trump must release the documents, Chutkan wrote “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”

The Trump trial

In the summer of 2023 Chutkan was chosen at random to hear the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith charging Trump with obstruction of an official proceeding and three counts of conspiracy (conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, to defraud the United States, and to impede the free exercise of the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted).

Chutkan has presided over several dozen cases against January 6 rioters and has a reputation for imposing tough sentences. In rejecting a request for home detention for one convicted rioter, she said: “There have to be consequences for participating in an attempted violent overthrow of the government, beyond sitting at home.” Such pronouncements from the bench and her earlier ruling on the Trump executive privilege claim prompted the former president to call into question her ability to fairly oversee his case. “VERY BIASED & UNFAIR” is how he has described her on social media.

She set a trial date of March 4, 2024, for the case, a move that angered Trump and his attorneys, who had said they needed two years to prepare for trial. “Mr. Trump will be treated exactly, with no more or less deference, than any other defendant would be treated,” she told his attorneys.

Serving as the presiding judge on what could be one of the most consequential court cases in U.S. history has brought changes for Chutkan. She has received death threats and was reportedly the victim of doxxing and swatting attacks. She no longer rides her bike the five miles from her Washington, D.C., home to the courthouse because of threats, instead—according to The New York Times—she jogs in her neighborhood with the U.S. marshals assigned to protect her before they drive her to work.

But those closest to her think she is unlikely to let the high stakes of the case and the high profile of its defendant affect her. “One trait of my sister’s that makes her good at her job is that she’s not terribly concerned with other people’s opinions of her,” Robynne Chutkan told The New York Times in 2023.