William J. Lafferty, III, is a United States Bankruptcy Judge in the Northern District of California. He was appointed to the Bankruptcy Court in April 2011, and was recently reappointed to a second fourteen term commencing in April 2025. Judge Lafferty was appointed to the United States Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Ninth Circuit in June 2016, and was appointed to an additional three year term effective June 2023. Judge Lafferty currently serves as the Chief Judge of the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Ninth Circuit. Judge Lafferty also served as a member of the Federal Judicial Center’s Bankruptcy Judge Education Advisory Committee from April 2015 through April 2021. He has also served on the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges (NCBJ) Education Committee on several occasions, and has most recently served as Chair of the Education Committee for the September 2024 Annual Meeting of NCBJ in Seattle, Washington. At the NCBJ 2024 Annual Meeting, Judge Lafferty received the NCBJ’s Excellence in Education Award.

Judge Lafferty received his J.D. from the University of California Hastings College of the Law, where he was a member of the Constitutional Law Quarterly, and earned his undergraduate degree at the University of California Berkeley, with honors in general scholarship.

Prior to his appointment to the Bankruptcy Court, Judge Lafferty served as the first law clerk to the Honorable Thomas E. Carlson, United States Bankruptcy Judge, Northern District of California. He joined the law firm Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin (now Arnold & Porter) in 1987, and served as a Director in the firm’s Bankruptcy and Corporate Reorganizations Department from 1993 to 2011. His past affiliations include: Vice President, California Bankruptcy Forum; Past President, Bay Area Bankruptcy Forum; Past President, and Bar Association of San Francisco, Commercial Law and Bankruptcy Section.