Neomi Rao

Neomi Jehangir Rao (born March 22, 1973) is an American jurist who serves as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019, having served in the Trump Administration from 2017 to 2019 as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Early life and education Rao was born on March 22, 1973, in Detroit, Michigan. Her parents, Zerin and Jehangir Narioshang Rao, were Parsi physicians from India who had immigrated to the United States in 1972. She grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and attended Detroit Country Day School, graduating in 1991. After high school, Rao studied ethics, politics & economics, and philosophy at Yale University, graduating in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude. From 1995 to 1996, Rao was a reporter for The Weekly Standard. She then attended the University of Chicago Law School, where she was a comment editor on the University of Chicago Law Review and executive editor of a symposium issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. She graduated in 1999 with a Juris Doctor with highest honors and Order of the Coif membership. Career After law school, Rao was a law clerk for judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1999 to 2000. She was legal counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 2000 to 2001, then clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court from 2001 to 2002.