Tuesday marked a turning point in an ongoing criminal case against Donald Trump when he pleaded not guilty to the allegation of interfering with the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election.

US Magistrate Judge, Indian-American Moxila Upadhyaya read the four criminal offenses and possible maximum prison terms for Trump from the 45-page indictment that was provided by special counsel Jack Smith.

Advertisement

He was arraigned in federal court and later freed on his own recognizance because this was his third arrest in the previous four months and cases had been brought against him in Florida and New York City.

Moxila Upadhaya is a US Magistrate Judge who hails from Gujarat in India and was raised near Kansas, Missouri.

She was appointed as the US Magistrate Judge last year on September 7. She earned her Doctor of Law or Juris Doctor (JD) from American University, Washington College of Law, graduating cum laude in 2003.

She received a Bachelor of Arts with honors in Latin Studies from the University of Missouri in 2000. She graduated with a magna cum laude from the Missouri School of Journalism.

Upadhyaya worked as Eric T. Washington’s law clerk for two years after earning her law degree. Washington is a former Chief Judge of the DC Court of Appeals.

The Washington, DC, office of Venable LLP is where she practiced complex commercial and administrative litigation. She left Venable in 2011–12 to work as Robert L. Wilkins’s first law clerk while he was a district judge in this court. Wilkins is now a US Circuit Judge for the DC Circuit.

According to her resume, Upadhyaya dedicated her pro bono practice to representing poor clients in post-conviction proceedings while she was an associate and eventually a partner at Venable. This included defending clients who raised claims under the DC Innocence Protection Act and the DC Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act.

Judge Upadhyaya received the Defender of Innocence Award from the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project in 2009 for her efforts in this role, and Venable recognized her Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year in 2006.