Alison Nathan

Alison Julie Nathan (born 1972, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and a former judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A former law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens and associate White House counsel to President Barack Obama, she was appointed to the district court in 2011 and presided over United States v. Maxwell, the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell, from its unsealing in July 2020 through the sentencing of June 28, 2022. Her commission to the Second Circuit was issued on March 30, 2022.¹²

Career

Nathan graduated from Cornell University in 1994 and from Cornell Law School in 2000. She clerked for Judge Betty B. Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit from 2000 to 2001 and for Justice Stevens of the Supreme Court from 2001 to 2002, practiced law in Washington and New York from 2002 to 2006, and taught at Fordham University School of Law as a visiting assistant professor from 2006 to 2008 before a fellowship at New York University School of Law. From 2009 to 2010 she was associate White House counsel and special assistant to President Obama, and from 2010 to 2011 special counsel to the Solicitor General of the State of New York.¹

Obama nominated her on March 31, 2011 to the district court seat vacated by Sidney H. Stein. The Senate confirmed her on October 13, 2011 and her commission issued on October 17, 2011. President Joe Biden first nominated her to the Second Circuit on November 18, 2021; that nomination received no vote. He renominated her on January 3, 2022 to the seat vacated by Rosemary S. Pooler, the Senate confirmed her on March 23, 2022, and her commission issued on March 30, 2022. Her district court service terminated on March 31, 2022.¹

United States v. Maxwell

Maxwell was indicted under seal on June 29, 2020 and arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New Hampshire on July 2, 2020. On July 30, 2020 Nathan entered the protective order (ECF No. 36) that governed discovery. Maxwell's lawyers, among them Jeffrey S. Pagliuca and Laura A. Menninger of Haddon, Morgan and Foreman, wrote to her under seal in August 2020 seeking to modify that order, stating that the government had subpoenaed material from the lawyers for Virginia Giuffre.³⁴

On April 16, 2021 Nathan denied Maxwell's motion to dismiss the indictment for breach of the 2007 Epstein non-prosecution agreement, whose co-conspirator clause provided that the United States "will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein" (ECF No. 207). Trial began on November 29, 2021. On December 9 she admitted Jeffrey Epstein's contact book as Government Exhibit 52 on the authentication of the former Palm Beach house manager Juan Alessi (ECF No. 535). On December 29, 2021 the jury of six women and six men convicted Maxwell on five of six counts.³⁵

Maxwell moved for a new trial on January 19, 2022 after a juror told interviewers that his own childhood sexual abuse, which he had not disclosed on the jury questionnaire, had helped persuade fellow jurors. Nathan held an evidentiary hearing and on April 1, 2022 denied the motion, finding the omission "highly unfortunate, but not deliberate." On April 29, 2022 she found three conspiracy counts multiplicitous.⁶⁷

On June 28, 2022, three months after her commission to the Second Circuit, Nathan sentenced Maxwell to 240 months, above the Guidelines range of 188 to 235 months she had calculated, as concurrent terms of 60 months on each conspiracy count, 120 months on the transportation count and 240 months on the count of sex trafficking of a minor, with fines totaling 750,000 dollars. She found that Maxwell had "directly, repeatedly, and over the course of many years participated in a horrific scheme to entice, transport, and traffic underage girls, some as young as 14, for sexual abuse by and with Jeffrey Epstein." The government did not seek restitution because the testifying victims had been compensated through the Epstein Victims' Compensation Program and civil settlements.⁸⁹

A Second Circuit panel of Judges José A. Cabranes, Richard C. Wesley and Raymond J. Lohier Jr. affirmed on September 17, 2024, identifying "no errors in the District Court's conduct of this complex case." The case passed to Judge Paul Engelmayer, who in 2025 ruled on the government's motions to unseal its grand jury record.²³