Michelle M. Pettit is a Magistrate Judge in the Southern District of California. Previously, she was an Assistant U.S. Attorney where she worked in the Criminal Division for over 15 years, prosecuting a wide range of cases such as drug trafficking, immigration offenses, human smuggling, child exploitation, sexual assaults, cybercrimes, domestic and international terrorism, and homicide. From 2019 through 2022, she was the Deputy Chief of Intake, coordinating the initial processing of all new reactive cases and training new prosecutors in one of the nation’s busiest border districts. Judge Pettit, who received a Bachelor of Science with distinction from the United States Naval Academy, began her career in 1994 as a Surface Warfare Officer in the Navy. She held multiple leadership positions in the Engineering, Combat Systems, and Operational Departments and completed two Persian Gulf Deployments on Navy Destroyers. She was selected for the Law Education Program in 1998 and received a Juris Doctorate Degree from Vanderbilt University Law School in 2001, where she was inducted into the Order of the Coif and served as a Managing Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review. Subsequently, she entered the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps and served six additional years on active duty, advising Navy officials on personnel and military justice matters and serving as the senior supervising prosecutor for the entire Southwest Region. In 2007, she transferred to the Navy Reserves when she joined the Department of Justice. As a Navy Reservist, she has been assigned as a Trial Counsel, an Appellate Defense Counsel, a Naval Justice School Instructor, an Executive Officer, a Preliminary Hearing Officer, an Appellate Judge on the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals, the Chief Reserve Trial Judge and Commanding Officer of the Navy Reserve Trial Judiciary, and the Commanding Officer of the legal office in Japan. In 2022, she was recalled to active duty to serve as the Circuit Military Judge for the Southwest Circuit. Judge Pettit has diligently served the San Diego Chapter of the FBA in a variety of capacities, including as the President in 2019 and as a Director on the FBA’s Board of Directors. In addition to her FBA service, she has been a member of the Ninth Circuit Conference Executive Committee and a Lawyer Representative for the Southern District of California. She is the Immediate Past President of the Enright Inn of Court, and she is an active member of the San Diego County Bar Association, the Lawyers Club of San Diego, the National Association of Women Judges, and the Association of Business Trial Lawyers.