Public Biography
Representative Janet Kuroda is a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from California, serving since 2019. She is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, where she oversees the minority’s engagement with matters of constitutional law, oversight, and civil liberties.
Ms. Kuroda was born in Sacramento and attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied political science. She received her J.D. from Stanford Law School and practiced civil rights litigation in Los Angeles for twelve years before entering politics. She served two terms in the California State Assembly before her election to Congress.
She sits on the Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability. She has been described by colleagues as “one of the most effective cross-examiners in the House,” a skill she attributes to her years in litigation and which she has noted is “increasingly useless in a body where witnesses have learned that not showing up is an option.”
In April 2026, she described the legal theory behind the withdrawal of contempt charges against Dale Whitford as “novel, aggressive, and unfortunately well-supported by every data set we reviewed.”