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Orange County’s Assistant Presiding Judge Cheri Pham’s home was raided last month by the FBI amidst an investigation into $10 million in missing federal COVID funds partially overseen by her husband, County Supervisor Andrew Do, and sent to a nonprofit that her daughter helped run.
That’s opened questions into Pham’s work and whether or not she should remain as one of the leaders of the Orange County Superior Court, even as she’s already announced she won’t be seeking the top job next year.
[Read: County Supervisor’s Wife Declines To Seek Top Judge Seat Amidst Family Controversy]
Pham is also responsible for investigating judges when complaints about ethics arise.
“I oversee and manage the responses to complaints about our judicial officers that come in from the public.” Pham said in an interview last year with the Portia Project podcast. “We are bound by the canons of ethics, the code of judicial ethics, to respond to every complaint that comes from the public or anybody. It could be from staff as well.”
Now, she’s facing an ethical question of her own.
Since his election in 2015, Do has faced repeated investigation and questions about whether or not he lives in his district, which only grew after the FBI raided the couple’s family home in Tustin, which sits outside Do’s district.
It’s unclear what penalties Pham could face if she knew her husband was breaking the law.
Read: Santana: OC Supervisor Andrew Do’s Political Journey That Ended in FBI Raids
Kostas Kalaitzidis, the spokesperson for the court, declined to answer what penalties Pham could face and said her role in investigating other judges was “procedural,” noting she had not been asked to resign by other members of the bench.
Those questions come after Pham has spent over three decades as a lawyer and later as a judge in Orange County, working for both the public defender and district attorney’s offices before becoming a superior court judge in 2010.
Pham did not respond to requests for comment from Voice of OC, and has largely stayed out of the public spotlight throughout her career.
But last November, she sat down for an interview on the Portia Project podcast, sharing her experience working as a judge and lawyer in Orange County.
To read a transcript of the full interview, click here.
Judge Pham’s Path to the Bench
Pham came to the US in 1975 when her family fled Vietnam, and decided to go to law school in honor of her father, who never finished law school after her family immigrated.
She graduated from UC Berkeley’s law school in 1990 and immediately went to work for the Orange County Public Defender’s office, where she stayed until the county bankruptcy in 1994, at which point she moved to the county’s newly established alternate defender’s office.
“I always say that the public defender’s office raised me,” Pham said on the podcast.
In 1997, she joined the District Attorney’s office as she was starting her family with Do, choosing not to go into private practice because she wanted to continue working on trials, she said. .
She stayed there until a judge’s seat opened up in 2010, at which point she ran for the seat unopposed and won.
“Having done both sides, I thought I would make a fairly competent judge,” Pham said. “Here’s my opportunity. Why not take it?”
Over the next fourteen years, Pham worked her way up through the courts, working as the Criminal Supervising Judge and serving on the North Panel, the Family Law Panel, and the Felony Trial Panel while she also lectured at Chapman University.
In 2023, she became assistant presiding judge and won the trailblazer award from the California Asian Pacific American Bar Association, recognizing her as the first Vietnamese judge elected in the state.
“Judge Pham’s achievements reflect resilience and dedication, from her valedictorian status to being the first Vietnamese American directly elected to California’s bench,” reads Pham’s bio on the associations’ website, also calling her “a groundbreaking figure in community leadership.”
She also administered the oath of office for her husband Andrew Do when he joined the board of supervisors on February 3, 2015, as their two daughters stood behind them.
She was there again in 2018 when Do took over as chair of the board, thanking her for her support in his acceptance speech, saying she was proof that “in America, if you work hard enough, you can be anything you want to be.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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