Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis and the Illinois Supreme Court have announced the appointment of Debjani D. Desai as an At-Large Cook County Circuit Judge.

Ms. Desai was appointed to fill the At-Large vacancy created by the retirement of the Hon. Lorna E. Propes. The appointment is effective July 14, 2023, and will conclude December 2, 2024, following the November 2024 general election. 

Ms. Desai has served since 2020 as General Counsel for the Illinois Office of Comptroller where she is the Chief Legal Officer leading a team of attorneys in Chicago and Springfield to provide legal and subject matter expertise on legislation, finance, operations, compliance, labor, and employment. She has also served since 2020 as a Special Prosecutor for Cook County in contested Juvenile Court proceedings and as an Adjunct Professor of Counseling & Negotiations at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. 

Before joining the Comptroller’s Office, Ms. Desai worked at the Illinois Department of Healthcare & Family Services where she served first as Administrative Law Judge and later as Assistant General Counsel, Litigation & Eligibility. From 2008 to 2014, she was an Assistant’s State’s Attorney in Cook County. 

Ms. Desai earned her Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from Loyola University New Orleans and earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. 

She received the Chicago Bar Association’s Vanguard Award in 2022 for her efforts to make the law and legal profession fair and equitable for women, people of color, the underserved, and the underprivileged. Her professional associations include the South Asian Bar Association of Chicago, where she is a past president, the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois, where she is a board member, and the Asian American Bar Association of Greater Chicago, where she is a board member.