Hon. Michael J. Newman is a United States District Judge in the Southern District of Ohio’s Dayton seat of court. He was appointed in 2020. He previously served as a United States Magistrate Judge, a position to which he was appointed in 2011, and reappointed in 2019 to a second eight-year term. Following law school, Judge Newman was a law clerk on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio and the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judge Newman graduated with honors from the Washington College of Law at American University, attended the Advanced Mediation Program at Harvard Law School, and holds an LLM in Judicial Studies from Duke Law School. Prior to taking the bench, he was a partner at Dinsmore & Shohl in Cincinnati, where he chaired the firm’s Labor & Employment Appellate Practice Group, and created and led Dinsmore’s pro bono appellate program in the Sixth Circuit. While in private practice, he was named a Leading Lawyer, an Ohio Super Lawyer, and one of the Best Lawyers in America in Labor & Employment Law.
Judge Newman’s bar service is extensive; he was the first Magistrate Judge in the United States to be appointed national president of the Federal Bar Association. He later served as president of both the Dayton Bar Association and the Federal Bar Association Foundation. His Civics and Service to Others initiative as FBA president resulted in thousands of young people from all across the country meeting with federal judges to learn about civics and the Third Branch of government. This civics work continues; Judge Newman was named the FBA’s first Judicial Ambassador for Civics Education, and he has been repeatedly invited to speak on the topic of civics education by the Federal Judicial Center. He now co-chairs the Sixth Circuit’s Civics and Outreach Committee and chairs the Southern District of Ohio’s Civics Committee. His Duke thesis addressed ways in which state and federal judges can best conduct civics education with secondary school students.
Judge Newman has been recognized by the Federal Magistrate Judges Association for “valuable and dedicated service to all Magistrate Judges,” and was honored to receive the Boots Fisher National Public Service Award given annually to one lawyer in the United States for “exemplary community, public and charitable service.” He also received the Federal Bar Association’s President’s Award for “leadership [as well as] extraordinary service, and guidance.” In 2019, he was recognized by Washington University Law School in St. Louis for his “service on the bench, to the legal profession, and to society.” In 2020, he was honored to receive the Ohio State Bar Foundation’s highest award, the Ritter Award, “for a lifetime of service…in attaining and promoting the highest standards of professionalism, integrity and ethics in the practice of law while assisting other attorneys, the courts and the public to envision and cause changes which improve the justice system in Ohio.” In 2023, Judge Newman received the Federal Bar Association’s Earl W. Kintner Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing his “distinguished years of service” to the FBA.
Judge Newman and his wife, Rachel, are the proud parents of triplet daughters, now in college.