Judge Mary M. Rowland was sworn in as a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois on August 22, 2019. She served as a Magistrate Judge for the same court from October 2012 to August 2019. Judge Rowland attended the University of Michigan for her undergraduate degree and the University of Chicago for law school. After law school, she clerked for District Judge Julian Cook in Detroit, Michigan. Judge Rowland then served for ten years in the Chicago office of the Federal Defender; first as a staff attorney and later as the office’s chief appellate attorney. In 2000, she joined the law firm Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, where she led the criminal defense practice and also litigated high-profile civil cases. Judge Rowland is a founding member and one of the judges presiding over the first alternative to incarceration court in the Northern District of Illinois, Sentencing Options that Achieve Results (SOAR). Since 2009, she has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Chapter of the Federal Bar Association. She is
also a member of the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago (LAGBAC).