Diana Gribbon Motz

Born in Washington, D.C., Motz[1] was raised in a legal family. Her father was attorney Daniel M. Gribbon, who had clerked for Judge Learned Hand.[2] She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vassar College in 1965 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1968.[3] She was one of two women in her law school class.[4]

Motz worked in private law practice in Baltimore, Maryland for the firm Piper & Marbury (now DLA Piper) from 1968 until 1971. She became the assistant state attorney general for the state of Maryland in 1972, and served in that capacity until 1986, when she returned to private practice. In 1991, Motz returned to the public sector, appointed as an associate judge for the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland. She worked in that court until her confirmation by the United States Senate in 1994 as a federal appeals court judge.

While an assistant state attorney general for Maryland, Motz won a $268,482 judgment against former Vice President Spiro Agnew to recover money he accepted as bribes while he was Governor of Maryland.

Motz was nominated by President Bill Clinton on January 27, 1994, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, to a new seat authorized by 104 Stat. 5089. She was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 15, 1994, and received commission on June 16, 1994. She is the first woman from Maryland to serve on the Fourth Circuit.[3]

Her husband, J. Frederick Motz, had been appointed a federal district court judge by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. The Motzes are the first married couple to each sit on the federal bench. "Yes, it's true: He's a Republican. It's his only flaw," Motz quipped.[5]

In August 2018, Motz wrote a special concurrence when the panel majority found that the Constitution's Eighth Amendment did not prevent Virginia from criminally prohibiting those it identified as “habitual drunkards” from possessing alcohol, in which she argued the majority was ignoring Powell v. Texas (1968).[6][7] In July 2019, the full circuit en banc reversed the panel by a vote of 8-7, with Motz now writing for the majority.[8][9]

• Diana Gribbon Motz at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• Appearances on C-SPAN