Judge Bobbie J. McCartney has been a United States Administrative Law Judge since 1994 and has served as the Chief Judge at United States Department of Agriculture, the Deputy Chief Judge at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Deputy Chief Judge at the Social Security Administration and as the Hearing Office Chief Judge in Billings, Montana, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Judge McCartney was appointed to the position of Judicial Officer by Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, on November 16, 2018. The Judicial Officer is a general officer of USDA (7 C.F.R. § 2.4) and serves as the Secretary of Agriculture's alternate on matters concerned with quasi-judicial authorities of the Secretary. She retired from USDA in October of 2020 and now serves as Vice Chair of the National Association of Women Judges Human Trafficking Committee.
Judge McCartney also has extensive litigation experience having served as a senior trial attorney with the United States Department of Labor's Office of the Solicitor in Dallas, Texas where she received numerous Exceptional Achievement Awards for her work before becoming an ALJ.
She earned her JD from the University of Houston and her LLM from Southern Methodist University. She has also attended classes at the Universities of Oxford and London. She is a member of the Texas and Colorado Bars and has been admitted to practice before numerous state and federal courts as well as the United States Supreme Court.
Judge McCartney has also been an active and effective participant in the ADR process. She has extensive and diverse experience in contract and settlement negotiations, mediation, arbitration, and other forms of alternative dispute resolution and is a past recipient of the American Arbitration Association Award for her accomplishments in this area. In addition, Judge McCartney has served as a faculty member with the National Judicial College teaching Mediation for Administrative Law Judges courses attended by a number of State and Federal ALJs from all across the United States.