Daniel P. Collins

Daniel Paul Collins (born 1963) is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Early life and career Collins earned his Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, from Harvard College. He received his Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School in 1988, where he served on the Stanford Law Review. After graduating from law school, Collins served as a law clerk to Judge Dorothy Wright Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1988 to 1989 and then to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1991 to 1992. Collins then worked as an assistant United States attorney for the Central District of California and as an attorney-advisor in the United States Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel. He later served as an Associate United States Deputy Attorney General and in that role participated substantially in the drafting of the PROTECT Act of 2003. From 2003 to 2019, Collins was a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson. In 2007, he was considered but not chosen for the position of United States Attorney for the Central District of California. In 2009, he represented Phillip Morris in opposing a ban on tobacco sales in drug stores in San Francisco. In 2017, he served on the Federal Courts Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules.