Kent A. Jordan has been selected to receive the prestigious 2025 American Inns of Court A. Sherman Christensen Award, which recognizes an Inn member who has provided distinguished, exceptional, and significant leadership to the American Inns of Court movement at the local, state, or national level. Jordan, a former federal judge who is now a director in the Delaware law firm Richards, Layton & Finger PA, will receive the award at the American Inns of Court 2025 Celebration of Excellence at the Supreme Court of the United States.

“[I]t is not unfair to say that Kent was the human bridge that brought the fledgling Inns’s movement to national recognition and prominence,” writes Circuit Judge Thomas L. Ambro of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and President and Dean William C. Koch Jr. of Nashville Law School, who nominated Jordan for the award. “At the least, he was a vital catalyst.”

Jordan earned an undergraduate degree in economics from Brigham Young University in 1981. He then went on to receive a law degree in 1984 from Georgetown University Law Center, where he first read about Judge Christensen’s founding of the first American Inn of Court. After meeting with Christensen, Jordan helped establish the Charles Fahy American Inn of Court in Washington, D.C. Jordan was then invited to join an ad hoc committee to explore the idea of a national organization, which resulted in the creation of the American Inns of Court Foundation. As a clerk with District Judge James Latchum in Delaware, Jordan and a fellow clerk worked with the judge to create the Richard S. Rodney American Inn of Court. Jordan subsequently served as president of that Inn and went on to become a board member of the American Inns of Court Foundation and its president from 2020 to 2022.

Jordan was a federal judge for more than two decades, including service on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 2006 to 2025. From 2002 to 2006, Jordan was a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Earlier in his career, Jordan served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware. Upon his retirement from the federal bench earlier this year, Jordan joined Richards, Layton & Finger as a director in the firm’s Litigation Department, where his practice is focused on alternative dispute resolution.

The American Inns of Court, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, inspires the legal community to advance the rule of law by achieving the highest level of professionalism through example, education, and mentoring. The organization’s membership includes nearly 30,000 federal, state, and local judges; lawyers; law professors; and law students in more than 360 chapters nationwide. More information is available at www.innsofcourt.org.

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Judge Kent A. Jordan (Ret.) to receive the 2025 American Inns of Court A. Sherman Christensen Award. bit.ly/AIC_Christensen2025