2024 Annual Meeting and Installation Luncheon

Please join the Federal Bar Association’s Chicago Chapter for the election and installation of its 2024-2025 officers and directors. This popular annual event hosts federal judges and hundreds of practitioners from Chicago and surrounding communities.

Hon. Virginia M. Kendall, Chief Judge of the Northern District of Illinois, will provide welcome remarks and White House Counsel Ed Siskel, will give the annual keynote address.

Chief Judge Kendall was sworn in as Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on August 1, 2024. Chief Judge Kendall grew up in Skokie, Illinois. She was nominated to the federal bench by President George W. Bush on September 28, 2005. She was confirmed by the Senate on December 21, 2005, and received her commission on January 3, 2006. Chief Judge Kendall served for six years on the Judicial Conference's Judicial Codes of Conduct Committee where she was responsible for drafting changes to the Codes of Conduct in several areas. She currently serves on the Judicial Conference’s International Judicial Relations Committee where she travels globally to support rule of law and foreign judiciaries.

Chief Judge Kendall has traveled domestically and internationally to train judges, attorneys, and investigators on the rule of law, ethics, and human trafficking and serves on the United Nation’s Judicial Integrity Network. She is a member of the American Law Institute and teaches law at University of Chicago, Loyola University School of Law, and Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. She was the Peter and Patricia Gruber Fellow in Women’s Rights at Yale Law School in 2018. She has published two books on human trafficking and numerous legal articles and serves as an editor on the Litigation Journal. Prior to becoming a District Court Judge, Chief Judge Kendall worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois, where she served as Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division, Child Exploitation Coordinator, and Coordinator of Project Safe Neighborhoods.

Ed Siskel currently serves as White House Counsel for the Biden-Harris White House Counsel’s Office. Previously, he served for nearly four years in the Obama-Biden White House Counsel’s Office, including as Deputy Counsel. In that role, he oversaw the White House’s legal responses to congressional oversight and to complex challenges such as the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. After leaving the White House and a stint in private practice, he served for two years as the top lawyer for his hometown of Chicago as Corporation Counsel under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, where he oversaw hundreds of attorneys and support staff, and most recently was chief legal officer for a Chicago-based investment firm.

He joined the Obama-Biden White House after serving at the Justice Department as associate deputy attorney general and, prior to that, senior counsel to the Deputy Attorney General. He previously was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Illinois and a clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court. A Chicago native, he graduated from Wesleyan University and the University of Chicago Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review.

Host or Publisher Federal Bar Association, Chicago Chapter