Judge Steve Kim

Appointed as United States Magistrate Judge in 2016, Steve Kim regularly presides over civil cases of all types in the District Court for the Central District of California under the District’s voluntary consent and direct assignment programs. Judge Kim also routinely conducts criminal bench trials for defendants charged with federal misdemeanors or petty offenses. And, as a neutral settlement officer with a better than 75 percent success rate, Judge Kim is sought frequently by civil litigants to help mediate their cases. Judge Kim is chair of the Ninth Circuit’s Information Technology Committee, a board member of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers, and a judicial member of the Executive Committee for the Litigation Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. In June 2021, he was elected to the membership of the American Law Institute.

Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Kim was a civil trial and appellate litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson, LLP, a criminal prosecutor in the Central District’s United States Attorney’s Office, and a managing director for Stroz Friedberg, LLC. Judge Kim received his B.A., with special distinction, from the University of Oklahoma, where he received the Carl Albert Award for the Most Distinguished Graduate in the College of Arts & Sciences. He then earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served on law review. After law school, Judge Kim clerked for Judge Stephen Wilson in the Central District of California and for Sidney Thomas in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. His chambers are in Los Angeles.