Judge Janaya Trotter Bratton
Judge Janaya Trotter Bratton has been elected president of the Cincinnati Bar Association, and will be sworn into office April 25 for the association’s 2023-24 year.
• A FIRST: Judge Bratton will be the first Black woman to serve as president of the 151-year-old association. The first Black man to serve as president was also a Chase graduate, John Burlew during 1988-89. She will be the 10th woman to be president.
•ALSO: In addition to being CBA president, Judge Bratton will be president next organization year of the Chase Alumni Council, which organizes Chase alumni events. This past August, she was the speaker for Chase Professionalism Day, during which incoming students commit to ethics standards of Chase and the profession.
• HER CAREER PATH: Judge Bratton graduated from Chase in 2008 and joined the City of Cincinnati legal department as a prosecutor. From there, she had her own practice from 2011 to 2016, was a lawyer in the Cincinnati civil rights firm of Gerhardstein & Branch from 2016 to 2019, and was elected to Hamilton County Municipal Court in 2019.
• HER THOUGHTS: “I am excited to continue to push the CBA toward its goal of creating an increasingly diverse legacy as the first Black woman to serve as CBA president. It is important to me that the next generation of attorneys of color see the CBA as their bar, a place where their voices matter, where they belong, and where they lead.”
