Honorable J. Michael Ryan was appointed to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 2003 by President George W. Bush. Following his appointment to the Court in November of 2003, Judge Ryan sat on a combined Domestic Relations and Abuse & Neglect calendar for two years in Family Court. In 2006, he sat on a combined Juvenile Delinquency and Abuse & Neglect Calendar. In 2007, he returned to a combined Domestic Relations and Abuse & Neglect calendar where he currently sits. Judge Ryan chairs the Mental Health/Mental Retardation and Domestic Relations/Paternity & Support Subcommittees of the Family Court Implementation Committee and serves on the Mental Health/Mental

Retardation Panels Subcommittee of the Panels Oversight Committee, the Mental Health/Mental Retardation Rules Advisory Committee, and the Pre-Trial Mental Examination Committee.

Judge Ryan was born and raised in the D.C. Metropolitan area. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy, with honors, from the College of William and Mary in 1979 and received his law degree in 1982 from the National Law Center, George Washington University. Following graduation from law school, Judge Ryan served as law clerk, was a partner in his own law practice and an attorney at the Public Defender Service and later as Special Counsel to the Director of PDS. He has lectured extensively on the use and admission of expert witness testimony, especially as it relates to issues in psychology and psychiatry.

Judge Ryan continues to chair the DC Jail Diversion Task Force, and has also served on the Superior Court’s Family Division Mental Health and Mental Retardation Branch Working Group and as an Advisory Board Member of the Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project of the Police Executive Research Forum. He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Georgetown University School of Medicine – currently inactive – and was a contributing writer to the Mental & Physical Disability Law Reporter of the American Bar Association.