The Hon. Marina Garcia Marmolejo

Jurist in Residence

Biography

Since 2011, the Hon. Marina Garcia Marmolejo has served as a U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Texas, Laredo Division. As a federal judge, Garcia Marmolejo has heard over 12,000 criminal and civil cases, presided over nearly 100 trials, and maintained a reversal rate of less than 1%. Garcia Marmolejo has sat by designation on the Fifth Circuit and authored an opinion on a matter of first impression.

Despite presiding over once of the busiest dockets in the country, Garcia Marmolejo devotes significant time to promoting the legal profession at home and abroad. From 2014 to 2019, she co-directed the Hispanic National Bar Association’s moot court competition. She regularly teaches seminars and workshops on U.S. law in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Paraguay and Spain. In 2022, she founded St. Mary’s clerkship mentorship program. In 2023, she will teach an advanced legal writing seminar at St. Mary’s.

Judge Garcia Marmolejo is also active in improving the judiciary process. She currently holds leadership positions with the Federal Judges Association, District Judges Association of the Fifth Circuit, Editorial Committee for the Fifth Circuit’s Criminal Pattern Jury Instructions and Advisory Committee for Texas’s State Criminal Pattern Jury Charges. Chief Justice John Roberts has twice appointed Garcia Marmolejo to serve on the Judicial Conference of the United States’ IT Committee.

Before she became a federal judge, Garcia Marmolejo served as a federal public defender, federal prosecutor and an attorney in private practice. As a federal defender and prosecutor, Judge Garcia Marmolejo tried over 30 cases to verdict. Her cases included domestic corruption, transnational drug trafficking, and complex human trafficking cases.

Honors and Awards