California Democrat Sunil Kulkarni Appointed a Superior Court Judge

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SACRAMENTO: Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. has announced the appointment of prominent Indo-American lawyer, Sunil R. Kulkarni, to a judgeship in the Santa Clara County Superior Court.

According to the South Asian Bar Association of Northern California, Kulkarni will be the first South Asian American judge appointed to a state judgeship in northern California. In 2010, Paul Singh Grewal was appointed a magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court in Northern District of California.

A resident of Palo Alto, Kulkarni, 41, has been senior counsel University of California, Office of the General Counsel’s litigation group since 2011. Earlier, he held multiple positions at Morrison and Foerster LLP from 1998 to 2011, including partner and associate.

Kulkarni served as a law clerk for Oliver W. Wagner, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California from 1996 to 1997. He earned his law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and a BS engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Born in Los Angeles, Kulkarni grew up in King City, California. Married, Kulkarni and his wife, Sujata Patel, a psychiatrist at Stanford University, have two girls, Asha, 7, and Leela, 4.

Kulkarni is the son of Salinas, California, engineer Ravi Kulkarni and his wife Anjalie, a retired elementary school teacher.