SAN FRANCISCO, CA - July 13, 2025 - Queen's Bench Bar Association formally announces that our 2025 Keynote Address will be given by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Victoria Kolakowski at the Queen's Bench Gala on October 8, 2025, in San Francisco, California.
Each year, Queen's Bench hosts an annual keynote address at our penultimate event of the calendar year, inviting our members and local community to learn from and engage with prominent attorneys, legislators, and legal scholars in the United States on contemporary topics and issues of special concern related to the mission, history, and/or goals of Queen's Bench Bar Association. Prior keynote speakers include legal scholar Mary Ziegler, the Honorable Lucy Koh of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, former California Supreme Court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, and the late United States Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Judge Victoria Kolakowski became the first openly transgender trial court judge when she was elected in 2010 in Alameda County. She became the first openly transgender administrative law judge (ALJ) in 2006.
Before becoming a trial court judge, she was an attorney for twenty-one years in Louisiana and California, serving as a sole practitioner, attorney in a small patent boutique firm, patent & licensing counsel for a publicly traded company, patent & general counsel of a different publicly traded company, senior state government utility regulatory attorney, and ALJ for two different California agencies: the California Department of Insurance and California Public Utilities Commission.
She is passionate about ensuring and expanding access to justice, particularly for those with limited resources. She serves on the Judicial Council of California’s Advisory Committee on Providing Access and Fairness and is the California Council of Churches' appointee to the California Access to Justice Commission.
Judge Kolakowski is a former president of the International Association of LGBTQ+ Judges (2015-2017). She has spoken widely on LGBT issues, especially transgender legal issues, to audiences in the U.S. and around the world, addressing audiences either in person or virtually in eight U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and nine other countries (Brazil, Canada, Colombia, England, France, India, Ireland, Israel, and Poland), often through the U.S. State Department’s U.S. Speakers Program.
She is a leading educator for the judiciary and the legal community on transgender issues. An adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, she will teach her class, “Equality and Religious Freedom,” for the third time next spring. This seminar examines the intersection of religious freedom and equality rights, a topic on which she has been published by both the American Bar Association and USF Law Review.
Judge Kolakowski is especially proud to have been honored as a “Pioneer in the Law” by the California Women Lawyers in 2014 and to have been named the 2019 California Legislative Women's Caucus' “Woman of the Year - 18th Assembly District.”
She received the American Bar Association’s Stonewall Award in 2025.
Judge Kolakowski is completing a two-year term as Co-Director of District 14 (California/Nevada) for the National Association of Women Judges, for which she chaired the LGBTQ+ Committee, Committee on Fairness and Access, and Diversity & Inclusion Committee.
Before becoming a judge, she co-authored the City of Berkeley’s public domestic partnership registry ordinance, was a founding officer ofEquality California (formerly California Alliance for Pride and Equality), was on the board of the Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom(SF Bay Area’s LGBT Bar Association) and served as co-chair of the board of the Transgender Law Center
Queen's Bench extends sincere appreciation to Judge Kolakowski and the 2025 Gala Committee co-chairs, Sara Craig and Juliane Smith, for organizing this year's Keynote Address.
