Judge Bios

Florence Y. Pan will be sworn in as an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on Friday, July 17, 2009, at 4:00 p.m., in the third-floor atrium of the H. Carl Moultrie I Courthouse, 500 Indiana Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. The Honorable Lee F. Satterfield, Chief Judge of the Superior Court, will preside.

Ms. Pan served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia from 1999 until she joined the Court on June 8, 2009. Ms. Pan most recently was a Deputy Chief of the Appellate Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where she supervised criminal appeals in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. As a Deputy Chief of the Appellate Division, Ms. Pan reviewed briefs and prepared attorneys for appellate arguments; and provided legal advice and training to attorneys and law-enforcement officers. Ms. Pan also handled cases involving difficult legal issues, including the case of United States v. Paul Askew, which she argued before the en banc D.C. Circuit.

Earlier in her career as an Assistant United States Attorney, Ms. Pan prosecuted homicides and other violent crimes in the Superior Court; as well as organized-crime and narcotics-trafficking cases in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Ms. Pan was one of the prosecutors in the case of United States v. Kenneth Simmons, et al., which was a six-month federal trial of six defendants, all of whom were found guilty and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. The defendants were charged in an 158-count indictment (along with lead defendant Kevin Gray), based on their membership in a criminal gang that the press dubbed “Murder, Inc.” The charges included narcotics conspiracy, Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) conspiracy, continuing criminal enterprise, and numerous other crimes involving drugs and violence — including eight murders and the shooting of a cooperating witness that left the victim a paraplegic. Ms. Pan received numerous Special Achievement Awards and a U.S. Attorney’s Office Team Award during her tenure as an Assistant United States Attorney.

Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Ms. Pan was Senior Advisor to Gary Gensler, an Undersecretary for Domestic Finance at the United States Department of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration. Before that, Ms. Pan served at the United States Department of Justice, first as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General, and then as an attorney in the Appellate Section of the Criminal Division. Immediately after graduation from law school, Ms. Pan served as a law clerk to the Honorable Michael B. Mukasey, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York; and then as a law clerk to the Honorable Ralph K. Winter, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Ms. Pan is an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Washington College of Law, American University, where she teaches Criminal Procedure. She received her law degree, with distinction, from Stanford Law School in 1993; and two undergraduate degrees, summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988. She was born in New York City, and was raised in Tenafly, New Jersey.

Ms. Pan is married to Max Stier. They are the proud parents of two sons.