On September 10, Indian American prosecutor Diane Gujarati was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as the newest District Judge in the Eastern District of New York.
Gujarati (51), was first nominated by President Obama in 2016 towards the end of his presidential term, to succeed Judge John Gleeson who resigned from the bench in March 2016. She was re-nominated by President Donald Trump in May 2018 and confirmed by a 99-0 vote this month in the U.S. Senate.
The confirmation caps an illustrious legal career that Gujarati began serving as a law clerk to the Honorable John M. Walker, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She then entered private practice as a litigator at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.
After three years, Gujarati left to dedicate herself to public service as a U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where she has worked since 1999, and served as a Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division since 2012.
As a federal prosecutor, Gujarati has extensive experience handling federal investigative, trial, and appellate cases involving a wide range of criminal offenses, including securities and other financial fraud, terrorism, violent crime, and narcotics and firearms trafficking, as well as significant experience in the area of government ethics. She received several awards and recognitions throughout her tenure at the U.S Attorney’s Office.
In a statement endorsing Gujarati’s nomination, Pankit J. Doshi, former president of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, called her “an experienced litigator with a long and distinguished record of public service…who will serve admirably on the District Court for the Eastern District of New York.”
In addition to her work as a federal prosecutor, Gujarati serves as an Adjunct Professor of Clinical Law at NYU School of Law. She also is a member of the South Asian Bar Association of New York, and has served on the Board of the Asian American Bar Association of New York, and on the Professional Ethics Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.
Gujarati is the daughter of Damodar Gujarati, an Indian immigrant, and a professor of economics at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and Ruth Pincus Gujarati who taught social studies at a Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx.
She was born and raised in New York City, and graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College of Columbia University in 1990, with a B.A. in Economics. Gujarati received her J.D. in 1995 from Yale Law School where she served as an editor of both the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal on Regulation.
In a statement released September 11, AABANY President Sapna Palla congratulated Gujarati on her confirmation. “As the first South Asian Article III federal judge in New York, Judge Gujarati is a true trailblazer and role model in our community. Having served on the AABANY Board with her for many years, I am confident that Judge Gujarati will continue to lead and inspire with her professionalism, intelligence, knowledge and dedication to public service.
We are proud to have supported our former Board Director and AABANY leader as she ascended to the judiciary, and we enthusiastically look forward to her continuing to make positive contributions to society and to the legal profession as a United States District Judge in the Eastern District of New York.”
