Judge Elaine D. Kaplan was appointed Judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims on November 1, 2013. On March 2, 2021, President Biden designated her Chief Judge.

Judge Kaplan joined the court after serving as the Acting Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Before President Obama designated her Acting Director in April 2013, she served as OPM's General Counsel, a position to which she was appointed in 2009.

Judge Kaplan began her legal career in the Solicitor's Office of the U.S. Department of Labor, first in the Employee Benefits Division (litigating cases arising under the Black Lung Benefits Act) and then in the Division of Special Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation. In the latter position, she briefed and argued cases in the federal courts of appeals that the Solicitor of Labor identified as particularly significant, and worked with the Office of the Solicitor General in preparing the Department’s petitions for writs of certiorari, its opposition to such petitions, and its merits briefs.

Between 1984 and 1998, Judge Kaplan litigated and supervised the litigation of cases at all levels of the federal court system as an attorney at the National Treasury Employees Union, an organization to which she returned in 2004 as Senior Deputy General Counsel.

In 1998, Judge Kaplan was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate to serve a five-year term as the head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency whose primary missions are to enforce the Hatch Act and secure relief for federal employees who are victims of whistleblower retaliation or other prohibited personnel practices.

From 2003 to 2004, Judge Kaplan was "of counsel" to Bernabei and Katz, a nationally recognized plaintiff's side employment law and civil rights firm.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Judge Kaplan earned a J.D., cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1979, and a bachelor's degree in history from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1976.

Elaine Kaplan
Chief Judge
U.S. Court of Federal Claims
202-357-6500