District Judge James K. Bredar

District Judge James K. Bredar was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1957. He graduated from Harvard University in 1979 and from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1982. He was a visiting student at the Yale Law School in 1981-82.

Judge Bredar was raised in Colorado and, before attending law school, served as a National Park Ranger in that state. Following graduation, he clerked for U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch in Denver. He then worked as a prosecutor, first as a Deputy District Attorney in Moffat County, Colorado and later as an Assistant United States Attorney in Denver. He also served as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Denver. In 1991 and 1992, Judge Bredar was a Project Director with the Vera Institute of Justice and led their office in London, England.

In 1992, Judge Bredar was appointed Federal Public Defender for the District of Maryland. He served in this position until he was appointed as a U.S. Magistrate Judge in 1998. On December 17, 2010, he was commissioned as a U.S. District Judge.

Judge Bredar was admitted to the Colorado Bar in 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court Bar in 1994, and the Maryland Bar in 1995. He is also admitted to the Bars of the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth and Tenth Circuits and the U.S. District Courts for Maryland and Colorado. Since 2007 Judge Bredar has served as a member of the United States Judicial Conference Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction. He is a Trustee of the Vera Institute of Justice in New York and he is a member of the Lawyers Round Table and Sergeants Inn law clubs in Baltimore.

Judge Bredar is the author of "Justice Informed: The Pre-Sentence Pilot Trials in the Crown Court", published by Her Majesty's Home Office in Great Britain in 1992; and "Moving Up the Day of Reckoning: Strategies for Attacking the Cracked Trials Problem," in The Criminal Law Review, a British law journal, also in 1992.