Judge Johnson formerly served as a United States Magistrate Judge in the Eastern District of Texas. Having almost a decade of experience with a broad federal civil and criminal docket and as the author of over 1,300 substantive opinions, she brings a wealth of significant and practical experience to both large-scale civil litigation and governmental or internal corporate investigations. Judge Johnson’s background as a former Assistant United States Attorney, as well as her civil trial practice, allow her to be a forceful advocate in the courtroom, a strategic advisor in the boardroom, and a welcome partner for clients facing complex civil or criminal matters. As a member of the firm’s Complex Litigation and Strategic Counseling Group, clients turn to Judge Johnson to draw upon her in-depth knowledge of the law from the perspective of having served as both a federal judge and an attorney for their most complex, bet-the-company litigations.
Federal Magistrate Judge
Judge Johnson brings an esteemed judicial career to her work at Shook. As a federal magistrate judge in the Sherman Division of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Judge Johnson was responsible for half of the criminal and one-third of the civil dockets in the District’s busiest division. Her work in criminal cases included overseeing investigations lead by the FBI, SEC, HHS, Homeland Security, DEA, USPIS, Secret Service, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and presiding over cases from their inception through a plea deal or up to trial.
Judge Johnson presided over civil cases from initial case management conference through trial and post-trial, including responsibility for all substantive motions. She developed a national reputation in handling issues related to electronic discovery in both civil and criminal matters. Judge Johnson’s civil experience includes presiding over cases involving patents, trade secrets, antitrust, RICO, class actions, collective actions, product liability, employment, and other complex commercial litigations.
Attorney
Before joining the federal bench, Judge Johnson’s civil litigation practice focused on complex business and commercial litigation, intellectual property, and corporate internal investigations. This experience included involvement in issues ranging from trade secret and patent litigation to fraud and complex commercial contracts.
Judge Johnson’s criminal experience includes representing clients in federal criminal investigations and defense of clients indicted in federal criminal cases. She also served as a special assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, where she was a member of the White-Collar Crimes section with a special focus on health care fraud and abuse. Judge Johnson’s prosecutorial experience includes prosecuting federal criminal cases involving international money laundering and other complex white collar crimes. Out of law school, Judge Johnson served as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Barbara M.G. Lynn of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division.
Legal Commentator and Educator
Before her time on the bench, Judge Johnson was regularly engaged as a network television legal analyst on criminal and civil legal matters for a variety of national news programs on ABC, CNN, Fox News and HLN, and local Texas network news affiliates for ABC, Fox and CBS. She was also a frequent legal analyst for national and local newspapers, including USA Today and Dallas Morning News, and various syndicated radio programs.
Judge Johnson has also invested almost a decade as a legal educator including working as an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, where she teaches Trial Advocacy and Pre-Trial Practice and Advocacy, a class she designed and added to the law school’s curriculum. She also teaches at Notre Dame School of Law in their intensive trial advocacy program each fall and is a frequent speaker for various legal organizations throughout the country.
For almost ten years, Judge Johnson has been a part of Sedona Conference’s working groups. Her extensive contributions to The Sedona Conference have included serving as faculty, speaker and instructor for classes on eDiscovery negotiation training, electronic document retention and production, and international electronic information management discovery and disclosure. She is a member of the following Sedona Working Groups—Working Group 1: Electronic Document Retention and Production (faculty and speaker); Working Group 6: International Electronic Information Management Discovery and Disclosure (faculty, speaker and member of Brainstorming Group on International Internal and Government Investigations); and Working Group 11: Data Security and Privacy Liability (faculty, speaker, and member of Brainstorming Group on Law Firm Data Security).
Judge Johnson has contributed as a faculty member for the past ten years at the Electronic Discovery Institute (EDI) Leadership Summit, where she maintains her role as a leader and teacher for EDI on a variety of issues. Throughout her involvement, Judge Johnson has regularly presented to both in-house and outside counsel throughout the country on a broad cross-section of electronic discovery issues. Judge Johnson also worked with the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) in providing education to active federal judges at all levels on current developments in the law. She served as the judicial co-chair (and lecturer) for the EDI and FJC Judicial Training Symposium, where she developed, directed and taught training programs on technology and data privacy issues for federal Circuit, District and Magistrate Judges. She also taught at the Judicial Patent Summit (in conjunction with the Berkley Judicial Institute) and at EDI’s Faculty Development Program.
Finally, Judge Johnson serves with the Government Investigations and Civil Litigation Institute (GICLI), where she is a faculty member and lecturer and is also a member of Women’s White Collar Defense Association.
Bench and Bar Leadership
While on the bench, Judge Johnson served in national leadership and educational roles for federal judges, as well as attorneys in both corporations and law firms. In 2022, she was elected by her colleagues to be the Fifth Circuit director of the Federal Magistrate Judges Association (FMJA), which is a national association of U.S. Magistrate Judges comprised of more than 800 active and retired members. Prior to serving as the Fifth Circuit director, she was selected to serve as co-chair of the FMJA’s Diversity, Community Outreach and Civics Education Committee and served as a member of the FMJA’s Magistrate Judge Statistics Through Automated Records (MJSTAR) Committee, both of which she served until her retirement from the bench.
Judge Johnson is a master of both the Sarah T. Hughes Inn of Court and the Paul Brown Inn of Court and is a fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation, the Dallas Bar Foundation and the Dallas Women Lawyers Association. She is also a life fellow of the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers Foundation.
Presentations
Judge Johnson is a legal educator and a presenter on emerging legal issues in civil and criminal law and has presented at more than 100 national, regional and state conferences for legal organizations, including the following:Law Schools — Duke Law, Georgetown Law, University of Texas School of Law, Temple Law School, and Austin College.
Legal Organizations — Federal Judicial Center, The Institute for Law and Technology, The Center for American and International Law, Federal Working Group Information
Governance, Women in eDiscovery, NorCal Patent Disputes Forum, Putting Insights Into Practice, ChIPs, Electronic Discovery Institute, Legalweek New York, Corporate Round Table, Rabiej Litigation Law Center, The Sedona Conference, Women in White Collar, and Stellar Women.
Bench/Bar Associations — Dallas Women Lawyer’s Leadership Conference, Federal Circuit Bar, Eastern District of Texas Bench Bar, Northern District of Texas Bench Bar, Texas Bar, Dallas Bench Bar, North Texas Federal Criminal Practice, Grayson County Bar, Paul Brown Inn and Sara T. Hughes Inn.
International Internal and Government Investigations, Sedona Working Group 6 Annual Meeting, March 6, 2025.
Publications
Co-Editor, Prologue, The Federal Judge’s Guide to Discovery, 4th Edition, 2025.False Hope for Mortgage Bankers in Appeals Court Win? National Mortgage Professional, November 18, 2013.
Virtual Open Court, The Bencher, American Inns of Court, July/August 2020.
Media Coverage
Missing Information Hampers ESI Decisions: A Chat With Judge Kimberly Priest Johnson, ALM/Law.com, March 8, 2022.Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers Leader, Is Denied Bail on Sedition Charge, New York Times, January 26, 2022.
Oath Keepers Leader Stewart Rhodes Jailed Pending Trial, Washington Post, January 26, 2022.
John Wiley Price Wants the Government to Pay for His Lawyer—That’s not as Crazy as It Sounds, Dallas Observer, January 15, 2015.
Getting to ‘Yes’ Just the Beginning in Oil Field Linkup, Houston Chronicle, November 18, 2014.
Female Power Brokers Q&A: Priest Johnsons’ Priest Johnson, Law360, April 2014.
Antitrust Lawsuits Jump in Texas, The Dallas Morning News, February 1, 2014.
Dallas Cop Accused of Forcing Woman to Have Sex—On Duty in Back of His Patrol Car, New York Daily News, January 29, 2014.
Texas Prosecutors Try Again to Get ‘Affluenza’ Teen Behind Bars, New York Daily News, December 18, 2013.
Texas Judge Pressured to Give ‘Affluenza’ Teen Drunk Driver Jail Time, The Christian Science Monitor, December 18, 2013.
Tarrant Prosecutors Try Again to put Drunken Teen Driver Behind Bars, Fort Worth Star Telegram, December 18, 2013.
Opening Statements in SEC v. Mark Cuban, The Dallas Morning News, October 1, 2013.
Jury Selection Proceeding in SEC v. Mark Cuban, The Dallas Morning News, September 30, 2013.
Jury Selection Beginning in Mark Cuban’s Insider-Trading Trial, The Dallas Morning News, September 29, 2013.
How Holder’s Decision on Nonviolent Drug Offenses Could Backfire, The Dallas Morning News, August 23, 2013.
Mark Cuban: Meet Barry Switzer, but No Sunbathing Please, The Texas Lawbook, September 26, 2013.
Judge Slams Feds’ ‘Inept’ Drug Probe, Houston Chronicle, August 1, 2013.
Zimmerman Verdict No Surprise to Many Lawyers, USA Today, July 14, 2013.
Zimmerman Trial Judge Is No-Nonsense, USA Today, July 5, 2013.
Evidence Suggests Suspected Killer James Holmes Had a Getaway Plan, Yahoo! News, January 10, 2013.