Magistrate Judge Jeffrey N. Cole was appointed on May 6, 2005, to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Judge Cole graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1965. Judge Cole then attended the DePaul University School of Law graduating in 1968. From 1969 to 1975, Judge Cole was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois serving as Assistant Chief of the Criminal Division and Chief of the Appellate Division. Judge Cole joined the United States Army Reserves serving as a Judges Advocate General (JAG) with the rank of Captain from 1970 to 1976. Following his position as an Assistant United States Attorney, Judge Cole entered Private Practice at Mayer, Brown & Platt from 1975 to 1976, eventually moving to Cole & Staes, Ltd., from 1976 to 2004.
Judge Cole held the position of Adjunct Professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law from 1985 to 1987. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law from 1998 to 2015, teaching trial practice. Judge Cole was the Editor in Chief of
LITIGATION
from 2002 to 2004, the nationally acclaimed journal of the section of Litigation of the American Bar Association. He has also been Editor in Chief of
The Circuit Rider,
the journal of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association, since 2005. He was also the Senior Editor of
LITIGATION
from 2004 to 2014.
Judge Cole is currently on the Board of Directors for the Northern District of Illinois Court Historical Association and was formerly on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Chapter of the Federal Bar Association. Judge Cole is the author of approximately 85 articles in various law journals and has been a guest lecturer and moderator in scores of continuing legal education programs on trial practice, evidence, and bench and bar relationships. The four volume, several hundred page appellate brief on behalf of the government in the Chicago 7 case was written under his direction while at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and portions of the brief were authored and argued by him, including the section dealing with the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. 2101, the Anti-riot Statute, which the Seventh Circuit held to be constitutional.