Karen Caldwell is a United States district judge in the Eastern District of Kentucky, where she served as chief judge from 2012 to 2019. She is a member of the United States Judicial Council’s Budget Committee and is chair of the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Judge Caldwell has sat by designation with the United States Courts of Appeals for the Sixth and Ninth Circuits.

Before taking the federal bench in 2001, Judge Caldwell was a partner at Dinsmore, working at the firm’s Lexington, Kentucky office. Prior to entering private practice, she served as an assistant United States attorney and then as United States attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

Judge Caldwell is an elected member of the American Law Institute.