Barrington Daniels Parker Jr.

Prior to his elevation to the Second Circuit, Parker had been a United States District Judge for seven years for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. President Bill Clinton appointed him to that position on September 15, 1994. Before that, Parker had been in private practice as an attorney in New York City for 24 years, from 1970 to 1994. His first legal job was as law clerk to United States District Judge Aubrey E. Robinson Jr. on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 1969 to 1970. Parker's father, Barrington Daniels Parker Sr., was a judge on that court as well, from 1969 to 1993. He was also a partner at Parker Auspitz Neesemann & Delehanty and Morrison & Foerster and an associate at Sullivan and Cromwell.

Parker studied at Yale University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1965. He received a Bachelor of Laws from Yale Law School in 1969. He serves on the Yale Corporation, the university's board of trustees. He also was a member of St. Elmo, a secret society at Yale.

Parker was initially nominated to that court by President George W. Bush on May 9, 2001, to fill a seat vacated by Judge Ralph K. Winter. However, the Democratic-controlled United States Senate returned Parker's nomination just a few months later without considering it. Bush then renominated Parker, along with many other previously returned nominees, on September 4, 2001. This time, the Senate confirmed Parker's nomination a little over a month later, on October 11, 2001, by a vote of 100–0. Parker was the first judge Bush appointed to the Second Circuit.

The fact that Parker had earlier been appointed to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by President Bill Clinton in 1994 may explain the speed with which the Senate confirmed Parker's promotion to the Second Circuit. It was somewhat unusual for Parker to be appointed to the federal bench by one President and then later promoted by a President from the opposing political party, although several other Second Circuit judges have had a similar trajectory, including Jon O. Newman, Fred I. Parker, and Sonia Sotomayor.

Judge Parker assumed senior status on October 10, 2009.

On July 9, 2019, Parker was part of a three-judge panel which ruled that President Donald Trump cannot block people from his Twitter account for being critical of him. Writing for the panel, Parker said that the president uses his Twitter account to make official announcements and actions, so that responses to it are protected by the First Amendment. The decision affirmed an earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald.[2]

• Barrington Daniels Parker Jr. at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

• Appearances on C-SPAN