Kimba Wood

Kimba Maureen Wood (born January 21, 1944) is an American judge who is a senior district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Wood received her undergraduate education at Connecticut College before gaining an MSc at the London School of Economics. In 1969, she earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, from which she took senior status in 2009. In 1993, President Bill Clinton unsuccessfully nominated Wood to be United States Attorney General.

Wood has presided over many high-profile cases involving such figures as "Junk Bond King" Michael Milken, Republican majority leader of the New York State Senate Dean Skelos, and Donald Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Her father was a career officer and speechwriter in the United States Army. In 1966, she received a Master of Science in political theory from the London School of Economics.

Career From 1969 to 1970, Wood was in private practice in Washington, D.C., working at Steptoe & Johnson where she was the only female attorney. Wood was a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 2006 to 2007. Like Clinton's previous nominee, Zoë Baird, Wood had hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny, but unlike Baird, she had paid the required taxes on the employee's wages. Wood employed the immigrant at a time when it was legal to do so, before the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made the hiring of undocumented immigrants unlawful. The threat of a repetition of the same controversy nevertheless led to the withdrawal of Wood from consideration. Janet Reno was later nominated and confirmed for the post. White House officials said they were angry at Wood because she had not told Clinton and other officials about the nanny, even when she had been directly asked. In her statement, however, Wood said she had not misled the White House. In 1991, Milken's sentence was reduced to two years' imprisonment and three years' probation at the request of prosecutors, to reward his cooperation in other investigations.

In 1998, Wood presided over the case of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem v. Christie's, Inc., in which the ownership of the Archimedes Palimpsest was disputed. Wood also later presided over Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc., 88 F. Supp 2d 116 (S.D.N.Y. 1996), more widely known as the Pepsi Points Case.

On July 8, 2010, Wood was the presiding judge over the US case against ten alleged Russian 'illegals' involved in the Illegals Program. She accepted the defendants' guilty pleas and sentenced all ten to time served. The ten were then deported and exchanged for four prisoners previously held in Russia.

On October 26, 2010, Wood issued an injunction in Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC, forcing LimeWire to disable "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality" of its software. A trial investigating the damages necessary to compensate the affected record labels was held in 2011 and ended in a negotiated settlement.

On November 19, 2010, Wood received attention in connection with a letter to the court from Bennet M. Epstein, an attorney, who asked for time off from a trial to attend his then-unborn grandson's bris, if the baby proved to be a boy. In response, Wood wrote that Epstein would be permitted to attend the bris, but that "if a daughter is born, there will be a public celebration in court, with readings from poetry celebrating girls and women."

In 2016, Wood presided over the case against Dean Skelos, Republican majority leader of the New York State Senate, who was accused of federal corruption charges.

In April 2018, Wood was assigned to preside over motions arising out of the search pursuant to warrant of the home and office of Michael Cohen, a personal attorney for Donald Trump.

Personal life In 1970, Wood married Robert Lovejoy, a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell. She went by the name Kimba Wood Lovejoy from 1970 to 1982, until the time of their divorce. In 1982, Wood married Time magazine political columnist Michael Kramer. Wood and Richardson married in 1999.

Leadership roles 2000–2001: Amherst College Board of Trustees Harvard Law School Association of New York City, President (one-year term)

Works and publications