Matthew F. Kennelly (born October 6, 1956) is a senior

United States district judge The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...

of the

United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (in case citations, N.D. Ill.) is the federal trial-level court with jurisdiction over the northern counties of Illinois. Appeals from the Northern District of Illinois ar ...

Education and career

Kennelly was born in 1956 in Marion, Indiana. He graduated from

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic university, Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend, Indiana, South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin fo ...

with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

degree in 1978 and Harvard Law School with a Juris Doctor in 1981, where he was Executive Director of the

Harvard Legal Aid Bureau The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau ("HLAB") is the oldest student-run legal services office in the United States, founded in 1913. The bureau is one of three honors societies at the law school, along with the ''Harvard Law Review'' and the Board of Stu ...

. He served in private practice in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

from 1981 to 1982. He served as a law clerk for Judge

Prentice Marshall Prentice Henry Marshall (August 7, 1926 – May 24, 2004) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Early life and education Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Marshall graduated f ...

of the

from 1982 to 1984. He reentered private practice in 1984 and served in that capacity until his appointment to the federal bench in 1999.

Federal judicial service

On January 26, 1999,

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

nominated Kennelly to be a judge on the

to a seat vacated by Paul Edward Plunkett. He was confirmed by the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

on April 15, 1999, and received his commission on April 22, 1999. He assumed

senior status Senior status is a form of semi- retirement for United States federal judges. To qualify, a judge in the federal court system must be at least 65 years old, and the sum of the judge's age and years of service as a federal judge must be at leas ...

on October 7, 2021.

Notable rulings

He gained widespread attention when he presided over the case of ACLU v. AT&T in 2006, "a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois on behalf of author Studs Terkel and other activists who said their constitutional rights were violated because of an NSA program of gathering phone company records." See

NSA Wiretapping The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

. :The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government's intelligence activities. Kennelly ruled that Terkel and the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit did not show that their particular records were seen by the government; therefore, they had no standing in suing the government.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kennelly, Matthew F. 1956 births Living people University of Notre Dame alumni Harvard Law School alumni Judges of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois United States district court judges appointed by Bill Clinton People from Marion, Indiana 20th-century American judges 21st-century American judges