The Hon. A. Ashley Tabaddor is a Biden-Harris appointee as the USCIS chief counsel.  She assumed her role in January 2021. Prior to her appointment as chief counsel, Judge Tabaddor served as an immigration judge for over 15 years where she presided over the detained, nondetained, juvenile and mental competency dockets. Judge Tabaddor has also served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles, a trial attorney with the Justice Department’s Civil Division in Washington D.C., and as a law clerk and attorney advisor for the immigration court and the Chief Immigration Judge.

From 2017 until her appointment as chief counsel, Judge Tabaddor served as the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. Judge Tabaddor is the recipient of judicial excellence awards by the Mexican-American Bar Association (2019), Armenian-American Bar Association (2014), the Arab American Lawyers’ Association of Southern California (2014), and the Iranian American Bar Association (2013). She is actively involved with the legal and the non-legal community, mentoring and speaking regularly before bar associations, conferences, symposiums, organizations and schools.

Judge Tabaddor received her B.A., cum laude, from UCLA, and her law degree from UC Law, San Francisco (formerly Hastings College of the Law). In addition to her duties as a judge, she was an adjunct professor with a number of law schools, including George Washington law school and the UCLA school of law.