Hon. Kimberly Priest Johnson (Ret.)

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.