Bio :

Hon. Deborah L. Thorne is a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, appointed on Oct. 22, 2015. Prior to joining the bench, she was a partner in the Chicago office of Barnes & Thornburg LLP, where she was a member of its Financial Insolvency and Restructuring Department. Her practice included the representation of creditors and other parties in insolvency proceedings, and she frequently served as a federal equity receiver in commodity fraud cases brought by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In addition, she co-chaired the Women’s Initiative for the firm. Judge Thorne is past chair of the Chicago Bar Association Bankruptcy and Restructuring Committee and past chair of the Bankruptcy Committee for the Seventh Circuit Bar Association. She previously served as ABI’s Vice President-Communications and Information Technology and is the author of ABI’s The Preference Defense Handbook: The Circuits Divided and a co-author of its Interrupted! Understanding Bankruptcy’s Effects on Manufacturing Supply Chains. Judge Thorne is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. She served as Education Committee chair for the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges from 2019-20 and as its president from 2021-22. Judge Thorne is included in The Best Lawyers in America in the area of bankruptcy and creditor/debtor rights law, is recognized as a Leading Lawyer in Illinois, and has been recognized by Illinois Super Lawyers every year since 2003. For seven years, she chaired Women Employed, a Chicago nonprofit policy organization focused on improving the lives of low-wage women through enhancing access to post-secondary education and improving job quality. Judge Thorne received her B.A. from Macalester College, her M.A.T. from Duke University and her J.D. with honors from Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law.