Kimba Wood

She married her second husband, Time magazine political columnist Michael Kramer, in the same year her first marriage was dissolved. In 1986, she gave birth to their son, whom they named Ben. This relationship ended in a divorce as well.

Soon after her separation from Kramer, Wood began a passionate relationship with her former Harvard classmate Frank E. Richardson II, who was married at the time. During Richardson’s highly publicised divorce proceedings, Wood became a co-respondent and Richardson’s diary entries where he talked about their relationship became public. After his divorce was finalised, they married in 1999.

Kimba Wood was born on January 21, 1944, in Port Townsend, Washington. She was named after a South Australian town her mother found in an Atlas. Her father was a career officer and served in the US Army as a speechwriter. She spent her youth travelling all over Europe because of her father’s profession. While the family was in Paris, France, she studied at the Sorbonne.

After graduating high school, she enrolled at Connecticut College to pursue a degree in government and graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree on the subject in 1965. After this, she attended the London School of Economics, from where she earned her Master of Science degree in political theory in 1966.

During this period, Wood grew interested in becoming a Playboy bunny and even spent five days in training. However, she left prior to joining a club.

She subsequently returned to America to study at the Harvard Law School, where she was one of the fewer than 20 female students. In 1969, she got her Juris Doctor.

Kimba Wood began her legal career as a private practitioner, working for Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C. She was their only female attorney. In 1970, she left the private sector to work at the Office of Economic Opportunity.

In 1971, she resigned from her post at the Office of Economic Opportunity and moved to New York City, where she returned to the private sector once more. Between 1971 and 1988, she served as the anti-trust law expert at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae.

Rising through the male-dominated world of anti-trust law, she was made a partner in the firm in 1978. Her reputation grew over the course of the next decade.

In 1987, New York’s Republican Senator Al D'Amato recommended her as a possible candidate to a seat on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York to US President Ronald Reagan.

On December 18, 1987, President Reagan nominated her to the said office which had been previously held by Judge Constance Baker Motley. Her nomination was confirmed by a unanimous United States Senate on April 19, 1988.

In 1990, Kimba Wood sentenced “Junk Bond King" Michael Milken to ten years in prison. A year later, the sentence was changed to two years' imprisonment and three years' probation when the prosecutors requested it because of Milken’s cooperation in other investigations.

On July 8, 2010, she received the guilty pleas of the ten “illegal” Russian defendants involved in the illegals program and gave all of them the sentences of the time already served. The ten individuals were later sent back to Russia in exchange for four American prisoners who had been held in Russia.

In 2016, she was the presiding judge in the case against Republican majority leader of the New York State Senate Dean Skelos. Accused of federal corruption charges, Skelos was sentenced to five years in prison and his son, Adam, to six-and-a-half years in prison. However, the convictions were later vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

In April 2018, Wood agreed to serve as the presiding judge on the motions that came up after the search pursuant to warrant of the home and office of Michael Cohen, who had been a personal attorney of the current US President Donald Trump until he was fired in May 2018.