Hon. Deborah L. Thorne is a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, appointed on Oct. 22, 2015. She is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, a member of the Board of Governors for the Seventh Circuit Bar Association and ABI’s Vice President-Communication and Information Technology.
Previously, Judge Thorne was a partner with Barnes & Thornburg LLP in Chicago. 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 served as co-chair of the Women’s Initiative for the firm and as a federal equity receiver in cases involving commodity fraud in the Northern District of Illinois.
Judge Thorne is a past chair of both the Chicago Bar Association’s Bankruptcy Committee and the Seventh Circuit Bar Association’s Bankruptcy Committee. She authored ABI’s Preference Defense Handbook, The Circuits Compared and is one of the authors of ABI’s Interrupted! Understanding Bankruptcy’s Effects on Manufacturing Supply Chains. In addition, she has been included in The Best Lawyers in America in the area of bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights law, was recognized as a Leading Lawyer in Illinois and has been recognized by Illinois Super Lawyers every year since 2003. 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.