⚖️ FJC Federal Judges Biographical Scraper

🚀 Export every U.S. federal judge biography in seconds. Pull appointment history, confirmation dates, education, ABA ratings, and court assignments straight from the Federal Judicial Center. Download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-25 · 📊 30+ fields per record · 4,000+ judges · United States, 1789-present

The FJC Federal Judges Scraper loads the Federal Judicial Center's official Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges and exposes every judge as a structured record. Every record contains the judge's name, dates, court assignments, appointing president and party, ABA rating, confirmation and commission dates, senior-status and termination details, and education.

Coverage: every U.S. federal judge in the FJC archive, from 1789 through current sitting judges, including district, appellate, circuit, and Supreme Court appointments.

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Target Audience / Use Cases

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Legal researchers	Build datasets of judicial appointments and demographics
Journalists	Investigate the makeup of federal courts
Law schools	Teaching datasets on judicial history
Political scientists	Study confirmation patterns and party alignment
Court technology vendors	Augment case-analytics products with judge biographies
Genealogists	Trace federal judicial appointments

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📋 What the FJC Federal Judges Scraper does

• Downloads the official FJC biographical CSV in a single request
• Parses every judge record including multi-appointment history
• Filters by name, court type, appointing president's party, or still-serving status
• Returns biographical (birth, death, gender, race/ethnicity) and appointment fields
• Includes education (school, degree, year) and a free-text professional career summary
• Exports in JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML

💡 Why it matters: The FJC biographies are the canonical source for federal judges, but the raw CSV has 201 columns. This actor flattens, filters, and gives you a clean record per judge.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon

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⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
nameFilter	string	No	(none)	Filter by partial name match (any of last, first, middle).
maxItems	integer	No	10	Max records.
courtTypeFilter	select	No	(all)	Filter to a specific federal court type.
appointingPartyFilter	select	No	(all)	Filter by appointing president's party.
stillServingOnly	boolean	No	false	Only judges with no termination date.

Example 1 - First 50 currently-serving district judges:

{
    "maxItems": 50,
    "courtTypeFilter": "U.S. District Court",
    "stillServingOnly": true
}

Example 2 - Every judge named "Smith":

{
    "nameFilter": "smith",
    "maxItems": 200
}

⚠️ Good to Know: The FJC source CSV contains up to 6 appointments per judge. This actor returns appointment 1 details directly and exposes totalAppointments so you can pivot for multi-appointment careers.

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📊 Output

Field	Type	Description
📛 title	string	Full name
🆔 id	string	FJC nid (node ID)
🎂 birthYear / birthCity / birthState	string	Birth details
⚰️ deathYear / deathCity / deathState	string	Death details if applicable
🧑 gender / raceOrEthnicity	string	Demographics
🏛️ courtType / courtName	string	Court of first appointment
🇺🇸 appointingPresident / appointingParty	string	Appointment 1
📝 abaRating	string	ABA rating at confirmation
📅 nominationDate / confirmationDate / commissionDate	string	Process dates
🟡 seniorStatusDate / terminationDate / terminationReason	string	End of service
🎓 school1 / degree1 / degreeYear1	string	First listed degree
🔢 totalAppointments	integer	Number of appointments held
🔗 sourceUrl	string	FJC profile URL
🕒 scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp
❌ error	string	Error if any

Sample record:

{
    "title": "Adam Ben Abelson",
    "id": "13761857",
    "lastName": "Abelson",
    "birthYear": "1982",
    "birthCity": "Cleveland",
    "birthState": "OH",
    "courtType": "U.S. District Court",
    "courtName": "U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland",
    "appointingPresident": "Joseph R. Biden",
    "appointingParty": "Democratic",
    "abaRating": "Well Qualified",
    "confirmationDate": "2024-09-10",
    "commissionDate": "2024-09-12",
    "totalAppointments": 1
}

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✨ Why choose this Actor

• 🟢 Official FJC source - the canonical archive
• 🟢 No login, no scraping fragility - it's a single CSV
• 🟢 Every U.S. federal judge in one run
• 🟢 Powerful filter combinations on demographics and appointment history
• 🟢 Outputs to JSON / CSV / Excel / XML

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Option	Free?	Filterable	Structured	Up-to-date
FJC raw CSV	Yes	No	201 columns flat	Yes
Wikipedia	Yes	No	Inconsistent	Sometimes
Westlaw / Bloomberg Law	No	Yes	Yes	Yes (paid)
ParseForge FJC Scraper	Yes	Yes	Clean JSON/CSV	Yes

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🚀 How to use

1. Create a free account w/ $5 credit
2. Open this actor on Apify Console
3. Set optional filters, click Start
4. Download CSV / Excel / JSON / XML
5. Schedule the run or integrate via API

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💼 Business use cases

Legal-tech analytics

Build judge profiles for litigation analytics products in minutes.

Investigative journalism

Pivot judges by appointing party, ABA rating, or court for stories.

Academic research

Datasets for studies on judicial diversity, tenure, and career paths.

Education

Class-ready datasets for political-science and law courses.

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🔌 Automating FJC Federal Judges Scraper

The actor integrates with Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub Actions, Google Drive, and any HTTP-aware tool via the Apify API.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Research

Study confirmation-vote patterns or senior-status trends over time.

Personal

Look up a judge before a court appearance.

Non-profit

Publish judicial-diversity reports.

Experimentation

Combine with case-outcome datasets to study judicial behavior.

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

ChatGPT · Claude · Perplexity · Microsoft Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is the data from the official FJC? Yes. Each run downloads the official biographical CSV from fjc.gov.

Q: How many judges are included? Over 4,000, covering every Article III federal judge from 1789 to today.

Q: Are state judges included? No. FJC's database covers federal judges only.

Q: How often is the source updated? The FJC updates the dataset regularly as new appointments are confirmed.

Q: Can I get the full multi-appointment history? Yes. totalAppointments reflects how many appointments a judge held; appointment 1 is exposed in detail, additional ones can be added on request.

Q: Output formats? JSON, CSV, Excel, XML.

Q: Free preview? Yes, free users get 10 records per run.

Q: Does this include the Supreme Court? Yes. Set courtTypeFilter to U.S. Supreme Court.

Q: What about judges before 1789? The dataset begins with the establishment of the federal judiciary in 1789.

Q: Licensing? The FJC publishes its data in the public interest; this actor is an independent integration tool.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

Webhooks, REST API, Make scenarios, Zapier zaps, Slack channels, Airbyte connectors, Google Sheets, and more.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: independent tool, not affiliated with the Federal Judicial Center. Only publicly available data from fjc.gov is collected.