Kimba Wood

Kimba Maureen Wood (born January 2)^[1][2] is a federal judge on senior status for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Early life and education

Kimba Wood was born in Port Townsend, Washington, and was named because her mother saw the small town of Kimba, South Australia in an atlas.^[3] Her father was a career officer and speechwriter in the United States Army.^[3] Wood frequently lived in Europe during her youth, where her father was stationed in several places, and she received early education at the Sorbonne.^[3]

Wood received a B.A. from Connecticut College in 1965.^[3] She received a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics in 1966. While in London, she spent five days training as a Playboy bunny.^[3]

She then earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1969, where there were fewer than twenty women in her class.^[3]

Marriages

Wood was in private practice in Washington, D.C. from 1969 to 1970, and was then an attorney with the Office of Economic Opportunity from 1970 to 1971.

She relocated to New York City and returned to private practice from 1971 to 1988, working as an anti-trust law expert at the firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae.^[3] Her first marriage was to Robert (Bob) Lovejoy, a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell. She used the name "Kimba Wood Lovejoy" from 1970 to 1982,^[3] and then the couple divorced.

Wood married Time magazine political columnist Michael Kramer in 1982.^[3] She retained her own name from that point forward. They had a son, Ben, in 1986,^[3] and were divorced some time later.

Wood is currently married to Wall Street financier and former Harvard Law School classmate Frank E. Richardson III, whom she wed in 1999.^[4][5] She had earlier been named as the "other woman" in a messy, public divorce battle in 1995 between Richardson and his socialite wife Nancy.^[3]

Judicial career

On December 18, 1987, based upon a recommendation from Senator Al D'Amato,^[3] Wood was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to a seat on the District Court for the Southern District of New York vacated by Constance Baker Motley. Wood was confirmed by a unanimous United States Senate on April 19, 1988, and received her commission on April 20, 1988. She entered on duty on July 28, 1988.^[6] She served as chief judge from 2006 to 2009 and assumed senior status on June 1, 2009.

One of Wood's most famous decisions was sentencing Michael Milken, known as "The Junk Bond King", in 1990 to ten years in prison; the sentence was reduced to two years imprisonment and three years probation in 1991.^[7]

In the Nannygate matter of 1993, Wood was Bill Clinton's second unsuccessful choice for United States Attorney General.^[8] Like Clinton's previous nominee, Zoë Baird, Wood had hired an illegal alien as a nanny; although, unlike Baird, she had paid the required taxes on the employee and had broken no laws. Wood employed the undocumented immigrant at a time when it was legal to do so, before enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made hiring of undocumented workers unlawful.^[9] The threat of a repetition of the same controversy quickly led to a withdrawal of Wood from consideration. Janet Reno was later nominated and confirmed for the post.

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.

Wood has also served on the Amherst College Board of Trustees, ending her term in 2001.^[10]

On July 8, 2010, Wood was the presiding judge over the US case against ten alleged Russian 'illegals' involved in the Illegals program.^[11] She accepted the defendants' guilty pleas, sentenced all ten to time served, and all ten were then deported and exchanged for four prisoners previously held in Russia.^[11][12] On October 26 of that year, Wood issued an injunction in Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC forcing LimeWire to prevent "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality" of its software.^[13] A trial investigating the damages necessary to compensate the affected record labels is scheduled to begin in January 2011.^[14]

On November 19, 2010, Judge Wood received media attention via The Atlantic online magazine regarding a letter from Bennet M. Epstein, an attorney who asked for time off to attend his grandson's bris, if indeed the baby is a boy. In a response to Epstein, Judge 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."^[15]

References

External links

• Kimba Wood at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• Profile of Kimba M. Wood '69 — Harvard Law Bulletin