Judge Nan Waller, JD ’79, a University of Oregon School of Law graduate and Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge, will be the distinguished speaker at the Oregon Law Commencement Ceremony honoring the 2025 Juris Doctor and Master of Laws graduates.  

The law school will confer more than one hundred forty JD and LLM degrees at the ceremony at 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 17, 2025, at Matthew Knight Arena. 

Waller is known for her dedication to the justice system, the legal profession, and the public, having served on the bench for the past twenty-four years.  

Appointed to the Multnomah County Circuit Court bench in 2001, Waller served as Presiding Judge for six years and before that as Chief Family Court Judge. Currently, she serves as the Mental Health Court Judge and manages the competency docket for the court. She also co-chairs the Chief Justice’s Behavioral Health Advisory Council, serves on CCJ/COSA Behavioral Health Committee Competency Workgroup, and on the Board of Lines for Life, a non-profit dedicated to preventing substance abuse and suicide and promoting mental health. She also serves on the Advisory Board for the Council of State Governments Justice Center. 

Both past and present, Waller has contributed her expertise to numerous groups that work to improve the justice system, including as one of four Executive Sponsors for Oregon eCourt, as a leader in the planning for a new central courthouse in Multnomah County, and was on Governor Kate Brown’s Children’s Cabinet.  She also served as a member of the Criminal Justice Workgroup of the National Judicial Task Force to Examine State Courts’ Response to Mental Illness and has received numerous awards for her work on the bench and in the community, including the National CASA Judge of the Year award, the Classroom Law Project’s Legal Citizen of the Year award, NAMI Oregon’s Gordon and Sharon Smith New Freedom Award, the Frohnmayer Award for Public Service, the William H. Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence, and the FORA Health Spirit of Recovery Advocacy Award.  

Oregon Law and the Law School Alumni Association honored Judge Waller with the 2024 Minoru Yasui Justice Award for her commitment to advancing the cause of justice on behalf of underrepresented communities.  

A fifth-generation Oregonian, Waller lives in Portland.