Colleen A. Brown

Hon. Colleen A. Brown is a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Vermont in Burlington, appointed on April 10, 2000, and reappointed to a second 14-year term in October 2014. She also served a term as Chief Judge. Previously, Judge Brown was a partner in the law firm of Lawrence, Werner, Kesselring, Swartout & Brown, LLP, where her practice focused on bankruptcy, both debtors’ and creditors’ rights, foreclosures, workouts and matrimonial bankruptcy issues. She also clerked for Hon. Beryl E. McGuire, Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Western District ofNew York, as the estate administrator in that court; as the Assistant U.S. Trustee for the WesternDistrict of New York; and as in-house counsel to The Canandaigua National Bank and Trust Co.Since being appointed to the bench, Judge Brown has served as a member of the Vermont Bar Association’s Professionalism Roundtable and has chaired the Federal-State Law Council for theDistrict of Vermont, Vermont’s first Rule of Law Conference and the Federal Judges’ Committee of the National Association of Women Judges. She has been very active in the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, including as the Second Circuit representative to the Board of Governors, a member of two NCBJ Education Committees, chair of the NCBJ’s U.S. Trustee Liaison Committee, chair of the NCBJ’s Liaison Committee to the National Association of Women Judges, and chair of the NCBJ President’s Special Task Force for Cost Containment. Judge Brown is an author for Collier on Bankruptcy (15th ed. revised) and an associate editor for the American BankruptcyLaw Journal, and frequently lectures on consumer and farm bankruptcy law. She received the NewYork State Bar Association’s President’s Pro Bono Service Award in 1992 and the Vermont Bar Association’s Pro Bono Service Award in 2006. Judge Brown received a B.A. cum laude with honors in philosophy from Colgate University in 1979 and her J.D. cum laude from the University of Buffalo Law School in 1983.