Reena Raggi


Reena Andrea Raggi is a Senior United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and maintains her chambers in Brooklyn, New York. She was formerly a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Education and background

Raggi earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Wellesley College in 1973, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She later earned her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, where she served as a member of the Board of Student Advisers, graduating cum laude in 1976. Following her graduation from law school in 1976, she served for a year as a law clerk for Judge Thomas E. Fairchild of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
She was admitted to the bar in New York, and joined the Manhattan law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel until her appointment as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in 1979, serving in that capacity until her appointment in 1986 as Interim U.S. Attorney. Later that year, she returned to private law practice at the New York law firm of Windels, Marx, Davies, and Ives.

Federal judicial service

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed her to the federal bench as a United States District Judge in the Eastern District of New York. She was the first woman to serve on the 14-member bench in the Eastern District of New York and, at 35 years old, one of the youngest Federal judges in the nation. Among the trials she presided over was one concerning the Golden Venture, a ship carrying around 300 would-be immigrants from China, which crashed-landed on a sandbar off Queens, New York in June, 1993.
President George W. Bush nominated Raggi for the Second Circuit on May 1, 2002 to replace Judge Amalya Lyle Kearse, who assumed senior status. She was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 20, 2002 by a vote of 85-0. She assumed senior status on August 31, 2018.
She is known for aggressive questioning of lawyers from the bench.