Judge Florence Y. Pan

Judge Florence Y. Pan was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on September 28, 2022. 

Prior to joining the Court of Appeals, Judge Pan served as a United States District Judge for the District of Columbia from September 2021 until her appointment to the D.C.

Circuit. Judge Pan also served as an Associate Judge of the District of Columbia Superior Court for twelve years, and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia for ten years. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, she worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary for Domestic Finance; and at the U.S. 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. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Michael B. Mukasey, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and to the Honorable Ralph K. Winter, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judge Pan received two undergraduate degrees, summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania; and her law degree, with distinction, from Stanford Law School. 

Judge Pan is the daughter of immigrants from China. Her parents were teenagers when they fled mainland China with their families in 1949, after the communists won the Chinese civil war. They met in college in Taiwan; and came to the United States so that her father could pursue a graduate degree in New York City. Judge Pan grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey, where she attended public schools and worked at a Chinese restaurant owned by her aunt and uncle in a neighboring town.