U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn, who served as chief judge of the Northern District of Texas from 2016 to 2022, has informed President Biden that she is taking senior status effective May 15.
Judge Lynn, who was nominated to the federal bench in 1999 by President Clinton and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on a voice vote, told The Texas Lawbook, that she has no plans to reduce her caseload but is “simply making room for another appointment for our court.”
“It has been the honor of my personal and professional life to serve the people of the Northern District of Texas,” Judge Lynn said. “I have greatly enjoyed the diversity of my docket, from high profile criminal cases to civil disputes that are very meaningful to the parties. I have been amazed at the quality of juries that have decided cases in my court. The jury system is a miraculous process that brings citizens together to decide critical disputes involving their fellow citizens.”
“I have had the great fortune of having brilliant young lawyers serve as my clerks and they and their families are part of my extended family,” she said. “I have witnessed superb lawyering by brilliant lawyers, and I have been mentored by phenomenal judges, such as Barefoot Sanders and Sid Fitzwater.”
“My favorite part of being a judge is to see excellent, well-prepared, lawyers, especially young lawyers, practice their craft before a responsible group of citizens deciding their cases,” she said.
In a 2022 CLE hosted by The Texas Lawbook, Judge Lynn said she plans to retire from the bench in September 2025.
“I’ve been telling everybody and I’m going to say it again right now: Come September 2025, I’m out of here. I’m retiring,” she said.
Judge Lynn, who is 70, is one of the most widely respected trial judges in the U.S. and is the only lawyer to ever chair both the American Bar Association’s Litigation and Judicial Sections.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that Barbara is one of the five best federal judges in the country,” Judge Patrick Higginbotham, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, said in an interview in 2022 with The Texas Lawbook. “Barbara has always been a star, even when she was in law school and later as a trial lawyer and judge.”
Judge Lynn has presided over some of the most controversial and important trials in North Texas during the past 23 years, including the 2009 criminal prosecution of Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill and the Hosam Maher Husein Smadi terrorism case.
The National Law Journal named her one of the most influential lawyers in the country.
Born Barbara Golden, she was in the first class of women admitted into the undergraduate program at the University of Virginia in 1970. While there, she met Mike Lynn, a fellow UVA student.
Their relationship solidified when Golden tried to join the two-century-old Jefferson Literary and Debate Society, which had never admitted a woman before, but she was rejected. Woodrow Wilson and Edgar Allan Poe were members.
One weekend, those opposed to admitting women into the Jeff Society were in New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras. Lynn, who was a Jeff Society member, called for a surprise vote to admit Golden. She was elected as a member by a single vote.
The duo attended SMU Dedman School of Law, where they were on the mock trial team with Houston trial lawyer Rusty Hardin. As her law school days wound down, Lynn and her fellow women classmates noticed that they were receiving very few offers from large Dallas law firms.
“We had this crazy idea that if we worked hard, did well in law school and demonstrated our skills, that we would get job offers,” Judge Lynn told The Texas Lawbook in an interview in 2015. “We noticed that men who graduated well below several of the women in our class were getting offers while those same law firms were ignoring the female law students.
“One law firm refused to extend me an offer because of my supposed strong connections to New York, even though I had not lived in New York since I was four years old,” she says.
Lynn and her classmates formed a student group at SMU and sued a half-dozen major law firms. Nearly every law firm settled instead of going to trial. And even though the one case that did go to trial was unsuccessful, most law firms in Dallas quickly changed their hiring policies.
“There was definitely fallout from Barb taking this very public stand,” says Mike Lynn. “We were never going to receive offers from any of those law firms that were targeted. But we did okay.”
Akin Gump hired Mike Lynn, who later founded his own litigation boutique, which now has about 50 lawyers. Carrington Coleman extended a job offer to Barbara Lynn in 1976, making her the first woman lawyer at the firm. Seven years later, she became its first woman partner.
“We had a firm policy to never hire students right out of law school,” Jim Coleman, one of the firm’s founders, told The Lawbook in an interview in 2015. “But once we saw Barbara’s resume and once we met and interviewed her, we eliminated that policy. And it was one of the best decisions we ever made.”
As a young lawyer, Judge Lynn’s career blossomed. She defended large corporations being sued for employment and labor matters. Every once in a while, she represented plaintiffs.
In the fall of 1999, she was appointed to the federal bench, assuming the courtroom of legendary federal judge Harold Barefoot Sanders. In May 2016, she became the first woman to be the chief judge of the Northern District of Texas.
During the past 23 years, the Dallas Bar Association has consistently rated Judge Lynn as one of the fairest and most knowledgeable judges in North Texas.
Legal experts point to a 2011 opinion she delivered in a potential securities class action lawsuit brought against Halliburton as evidence of Judge Lynn’s brilliance and influence.
In her decision, Judge Lynn ruled that Fifth Circuit precedent required that she decide for Halliburton, but she made it clear that she didn’t like it and believed that the Fifth Circuit made it too difficult for plaintiffs in these kinds of cases to achieve class action status.
“This was a great opinion because Judge Lynn followed the law as set by the Fifth Circuit, but she also noted how she thought that precedent was wrong or at least too burdensome on plaintiffs,” Nina Cortell, an appellate law expert at Haynes and Boone in Dallas, told The Texas Lawbook in 2015.
Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Halliburton case, citing Judge Lynn’s opinion as its guide in ruling for the plaintiffs and striking down the more burdensome Fifth Circuit precedent.
“The Halliburton case demonstrates that Judge Lynn is certainly brilliant and that she follows precedent, even if she disagrees with it, but that she also possesses great common sense and is able to convincingly share that common sense with her colleagues on higher courts,” Cortell said.
Judge Lynn said that she recommends young lawyers try public service – “judging in particular, as a way to serve the public and the profession.”
“It is an intellectually stimulating job with weighty and important responsibilities,” she said.