Justice Daniel Kelly was appointed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2016 by Gov. Scott Walker to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice David T. Prosser, Jr. He served in that capacity until August 2020.
A native of Santa Barbara, California, Justice Kelly grew up in Arvada, Colorado. He came to Waukesha, Wisconsin, to study at Carroll College (now Carroll University), where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Spanish in 1986. He earned his law degree from Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in 1991.
Before joining the Supreme Court, he spent most of his career at one of the largest and oldest law firms in the State of Wisconsin, where he represented clients in courts across the country, including the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Early in his legal career, Justice Kelly was a law clerk and then staff attorney for the Office of Special Masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims from 1992 to 1996. He worked as a law clerk for the late Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Ralph Adam Fine from 1991 to 1992.
Justice Kelly has recently served as Senior Fellow in Constitutional Governance at the Institute for Reforming Government, where he authored “The Legislator’s Guide to Legislative Oversight,” a ground-breaking work that introduced a methodology for conducting oversight investigations and hearings that will lead to real-world results.
Justice Kelly now provides consultation services to both non-profit and for-profit organizations, with a focus on structural constitutional issues.
Justice Kelly is a member of the board of advisors and past president of the Milwaukee Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society. He is married and has five children. He lives in North Prairie, Wisconsin, where he enjoys intriguing books, the comfortably warm fellowship of good friends and interesting people, all things equestrian and—above all—his family.
