Honorable Douglas P. Woodlock

United States District Judge, District of Massachusetts

Douglas P. Woodlock was appointed a United States District Judge for the District of Massachusetts in 1986. Judge Woodlock was chairman of the District Court’s Rules Committee from 1992 to 2005, a director of the Federal Judges Association from 1996 to 2001 and received the Boston Bar Association’s Citation of Judicial Excellence in 2005.

From l975-l976, Judge Woodlock was a law clerk to Judge Frank J. Murray, later his colleague on the District Court in Boston. He was in private practice with the Boston law firm of Goodwin, Procter & Hoar from 1976-1979 and l983-l986, where he was a partner in the litigation department before his appointment to the bench. Judge Woodlock served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Boston from l979-l983 prosecuting political corruption and organized crime cases, for which he received the Director's Award from the Department of Justice in 1983; and, while a partner at Goodwin Procter, from l984-l986 was the first Chairman of the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state's public defender program.

Judge Woodlock was named by Chief Justice Rehnquist in 1987 to be a charter member of Space, Facilities and Security
Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, serving until 1995 to develop design standards for the federal
courts nationally. From 1988 to 1998, Judge Woodlock was also chairman of the new Boston Federal Courthouse Building Committee supervising on behalf of the courts the design and construction of the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse on Boston’s Fan Pier. In 1996 he received the Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture from the American Institute of Architects for his work supporting design excellence in civic buildings. A graduate of Yale College, Judge Woodlock worked as a newspaper reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times in Chicago and Springfield, Illinois (1969-71) and in Washington, D.C. (1971- 1973), covering the Supreme Court of the United States. He left journalism to join the Office of Chief Counsel for the Division of Corporation Finance at the United States Securities Exchange Commission (1973-1975) while completing his law degree in 1975 from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was Articles Editor and an Executive Board Member of the Law Journal.