Jane L. Kelly


Jane Louise Kelly is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Early life and education

Kelly was born in 1964 in Greencastle, Indiana to Richard and Judith C. Kelly. She was raised in Greencastle and graduated from Greencastle High School in 1983 as co-valedictorian. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, in 1987, from Duke University, and a Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Harvard Law School, in 1991. She studied pediatrics for one year in New Zealand under a Fulbright Scholarship in between Duke and Harvard. Her graduating class included Barack Obama, who became the 44th president of the United States.

Legal career

After graduation, Kelly was a law clerk to Donald J. Porter, chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of South Dakota in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She then clerked for David R. Hansen, a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. During the 1993–94 academic year, Kelly taught as a visiting instructor at the University of Illinois College of Law.
Kelly became an assistant federal public defender in the Northern District of Iowa, in 1994 and served as the supervising attorney in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa office, from 1999 to 2013.

Federal judicial service

On January 31, 2013, President Barack Obama nominated Kelly to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, to the seat vacated by Judge Michael Joseph Melloy, who took senior status, on February 1, 2013. Her nomination was reported on a voice vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on March 22, 2013. The Senate confirmed Kelly, in a 96–0 vote, on April 24, 2013. She received her commission on April 25, 2013.
In March 2016, Kelly was reported as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court to replace the vacancy caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
In July 2017, Kelly dissented when the en banc Eighth Circuit found, by a vote of 7-2, that the National Labor Relations Act did not protect Jimmy John's employees from being fired for putting up Industrial Workers of the World posters seeking sick leave.

Notable cases

On August 23, 2019, Kelly dissented when the Eighth Circuit ruled in favor of a religious exemption from a state's anti-discrimination law.
On September 4, 2019, Kelly dissented when the Eighth circuit by a 2-1 vote denied a female student's Title IX claim against her university for failure to protect her against stalking and sexual harassment.

Personal life

In 2004, Kelly was attacked while jogging in a park in Cedar Rapids, brutally beaten and left barely conscious; her assailant was never identified.