Steven P. Logan is an American lawyer, military officer, and federal judge who has served on the United States District Court for the District of Arizona since 2014. His career has combined federal prosecution, immigration adjudication, military legal service, and judicial work, including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan with the United States Marine Corps.
Background
Logan was born in 1965 in Tacoma, Washington, and grew up in a military family as the son of a career United States Army officer. His childhood involved living in several parts of the United States and abroad before he graduated from North Hardin High School in Radcliff, Kentucky, in 1984.
Logan became the first member of his military family to graduate from college. His early background connected public-school education, military mobility, and an expanding interest in law and public service.
Education
Logan graduated from North Hardin High School in Radcliff, Kentucky, in 1984. He then studied criminal justice at the University of Louisville, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1988. The University of Louisville, founded in 1798, is a public research university whose professional and civic traditions reflect the development of higher education in Kentucky.
He earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 1992. The University of Oklahoma is a public research university in Norman, while its law school provides professional legal education within the American common-law tradition. Logan later received a Master of Arts degree from National University in 1997, an institution established in California in 1971 with a focus on accessible higher education for working adults and military personnel.
Career
Logan began his legal and military careers in the early 1990s. He served in the United States Marine Corps as a judge advocate and captain from 1992 to 1999, including work as a contracting officer for the Department of Defense, chief civil law attorney at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, and chief prosecutor there. Judge advocates provide legal advice, litigation, and criminal-law support within the military justice system.
He joined the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Minnesota as an assistant United States attorney from 1999 to 2001, then served as an assistant United States attorney in the District of Arizona from 2001 to 2010. From 2008 to 2009, he was chief of the office's White Collar and Public Corruption Section, a unit handling federal prosecutions involving complex financial and governmental misconduct.
Logan also continued his Marine Corps Reserve service. He served as a military judge from 2005 to 2011 and as deputy chief reserve military judge from 2009 to 2011. His reserve assignments included deployments to Iraq in 2004 and 2007–2008 and to Afghanistan in 2008–2009, as well as service as a senior defense counsel, liaison officer to the Al Anbar Provincial Chief Judge, and senior legal mentor to the Afghanistan National Army. He later served as staff judge advocate at Offutt Air Force Base and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar and as an appellate military judge on the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals from 2013 to 2014.
From 2010 to 2012, Logan served as an immigration judge with the Executive Office for Immigration Review in the United States Department of Justice. He became a United States magistrate judge for the District of Arizona on January 30, 2012, serving until 2014. President Barack Obama nominated him for a district judgeship on September 19, 2013; the Senate confirmed him by a 96–0 vote on May 14, 2014, and he received his judicial commission on May 16, 2014. He has served as a United States district judge for the District of Arizona since that date, maintaining chambers in Phoenix.
Views
Logan's public reflections emphasize perseverance, public service, professional integrity, and the importance of refusing to let other people define one's possibilities. He has encouraged young people to identify their own goals and seek mentors who support them.
Personality
Logan has publicly emphasized perseverance, disciplined service, and the importance of encouragement. In discussing his path to the federal bench, he has credited his parents' repeated encouragement not to give up.
Quotes from others about the person
Logan has said that the Marine Corps taught him leadership, integrity, and professionalism and that those lessons continued to shape his work as a judge.
Connections
Logan is the son of a career United States Army officer. His military-family background and his own Marine Corps service formed a continuous connection between his personal history, legal career, and public service.
