Chief Judge Nancy Alquist

Nancy V. Alquist became bankruptcy judge for the District of Maryland in 2004.  Judge Alquist was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Maine. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Temple University School of Law.

Prior to joining the bench, Judge Alquist practiced law in Philadelphia, Chicago and Baltimore/Washington.  She was a partner of Winston & Strawn and of Ballard Spahr.  Judge Alquist has served on the Boards of the Federal Bar Association (Maryland Chapter) and the Maryland SPCA.  She is a former President of the Bankruptcy Bar Association for the District of Maryland.  She is a member of the Judicial and International Divisions of the American Bar Association, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute, the International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation (IWIRC), and the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges (NCBJ).  Judge Alquist serves as the Bankruptcy Judge Representative on the Fourth Circuit Judicial Council. 

Since being appointed to the bench, Judge Alquist has been active in international judicial education and technical assistance work.  She was part of the U.S. State Department-sponsored program for Algerian judges in Oran, Algeria.  Under auspices of the U.S. Commerce Department, she led a delegation to Doha, Qatar to conduct a seminar for Qatari judges (in the first such program in that country), traveled to Manama, Bahrain to present a technical program for Bahraini judges,  hosted the first Egyptian judicial delegation (the Egyptian Economic Court) to visit the United States after the uprisings of the spring of 2011, hosted Armenian commercial court judges, and conducted bankruptcy workshops for judges in Odessa, Ukraine and in Pristina, Kosovo.  She has addressed judges and lawyers in Madrid regarding international law and insurance issues.  As part of the International Judicial Academy, she has lectured to judges in Argentina and Chile, and addressed law students at the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia. 

She participates in Open World Rule of Law programs for non-U.S. judges.  With the Federal Judicial Center, she has been part of colloquia for Russian judicial delegations including members of the Arbitrazh Court, and has hosted the FJC’s visiting judicial Fellow from Japan.  She assisted in hosting the visits of Saudi Arabian and Bahraini judicial delegations to the District of Maryland.  Judge Alquist was a member of the U.S. judicial delegation to the Second Circuit Judicial Council’s Bankruptcy Study Tour for Judges from the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China.  She has been a guest speaker to Chinese law students at the Northwest University of Politics and Law in Xi’an, China.  Under the aegis of the World Bank Judicial Reform Support Project, she hosted members of the Supreme Court of the Philippines.  In a program sponsored by the Iraqi Judicial Development Institute, she hosted an Iraqi judicial delegation including the Chief Justice of Iraq and the Dean of the Baghdad University School of Law.  She then traveled to Baghdad to work with the newly formed Iraqi Commercial Court.

Judge Alquist is a member of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges and served for many years as Vice Chair of its International Judicial Relations Committee.  She is a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) and the International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation (IWIRC), and is an advisor to the International Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) of the U.S. Department of Commerce.   She serves on the Board of the International Judicial Academy (IJA) based in Washington, D.C.