Rebecca Ruth Pallmeyer (born September 13, 1954) is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
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Education and career
Pallmeyer was born September 13, 1954, in Tokyo, Japan. Pallmeyer received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Valparaiso University in 1976 and a J.D. degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1979. She was a law clerk to Rosalie E. Wahl, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice, from 1979 to 1980. She was in private practice in Chicago, Illinois, from 1980 to 1985 at the law firm of Hopkins & Sutter. She was an administrative law judge on the Illinois Human Rights Commission from 1985 to 1991. She was a United States magistrate judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois from 1991 to 1998.
Federal judicial service
Pallmeyer was nominated by President Bill Clinton on July 31, 1997, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois vacated by Judge William Thomas Hart. She was confirmed by the United States Senate on October 21, 1998, via a voice vote, and received her commission on October 22, 1998.
On July 1, 2019, she became chief judge of the Northern District of Illinois. She is the first woman to do so, in the nearly 200 years of the court's existence. She served as the chief judge from July 1, 2019 to August 1, 2024, when she assumed senior status.