Hon. Barbara J. Houser

Hon. Barbara J. Houser is a retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas, now serving on recall status, and she is ABI?s Immediate Past President. She previously was with Locke, Purnell, Boren, Laney & Neely in Dallas and became a shareholder there in 1985. In 1988, she joined Sheinfeld, Maley & Kay, P.C. as the shareholder-in-charge of the Dallas office and remained there until she was sworn in as a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge in 2000. While at Sheinfeld, Judge Houser led the firm?s representation of clients in a variety of significant national chapter 11 cases. She lectures and publishes frequently, is a past chairman of the Dallas Bar Association?s Committee on Bankruptcy and Corporate Reorganization, is a member of the Dallas, Texas and American Bar Associations, and is a Fellow of the Texas and American Bar Foundations. Judge Houser served as a contributing author to Collier on Bankruptcy for many years and taught creditors? rights as a visiting professor at the SMU Dedman School of Law. She was elected a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy in 1994, and in 1996, she was elected a conferee of the National Bankruptcy Conference. In 1998, the National Law Journal named Judge Houser as one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America. After becoming a bankruptcy judge, she joined the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges and served as its president from 2009-10. Judge Houser has received a variety of awards and honors since taking the bench, the Distinguished Alumni Award for Judicial Service from the SMU Dedman School of Law in February 2011, ABI?s Judge William Norton Jr. Judicial Excellence Award in October 2014, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Alliance of Bankruptcy Inns of the American Inns of Court in October 2016. She also received the Distinguished Service Award from the American College of Bankruptcy in October 2021. Judge Houser has served the judiciary in a number of capacities during her 21 years on the bench, including as a member of the Judicial Conference Committee on the Administration of the Bankruptcy System for seven years, as a member of the faculty that the Federal Judicial Center selected to teach new bankruptcy judges for many years, and as a member of the board of directors of the Federal Judicial Center, which is chaired by Chief Justice John Roberts. In June 2017, she was appointed to serve as the leader of a five-federal-judge mediation team tasked with settling all of the issues in dispute in connection with the historic insolvency filings by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and certain related instrumentalities under Title III of PROMESA. Judge Houser received her undergraduate degree with high distinction from the University of Nebraska and her J.D. from Southern Methodist University Law School, where she was editor of its law review.

Hon. Barbara J. Houser