A San Diego trial lawyer who became a federal judge — and never stopped trying cases.

Larry Alan Burns was born in Pasadena in 1954, the son of a police officer who held prosecutors in unusually high regard. That regard transferred. He came to Point Loma College, took his law degree from the University of San Diego in 1979, and has practiced in this city ever since.

He started as a San Diego County deputy district attorney, then spent twelve years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney — Chief of Violent Crimes, Assistant Chief of the Criminal Division, Deputy U.S. Attorney. Peers described him as the top trial lawyer in the office. One colleague told Chief Judge Dana Sabraw that “the clocks stopped when Larry Burns stood to deliver his closing arguments.”

Appointed a United States Magistrate Judge in 1997, he spent those first years as a civil settlement judge and helped parties resolve hundreds of cases — the work that now defines his private practice. President George W. Bush nominated him to the district court in 2003. The American Bar Association unanimously rated him well qualified. The Senate confirmed him 91–0.

Over the next two decades he presided over 326 federal jury trials, sat by designation on the Ninth Circuit (authoring eight reported decisions), and served as a visiting trial judge in New York, Florida, Arizona, Idaho, Utah, and Guam. He was Chief Judge during the first years of the pandemic. He assumed senior status in 2021 and retired from the court on May 1, 2024, joining Judicate West the same day.

He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, an Advocate of the American Board of Trial Advocates, and co-author of the Ninth Circuit Criminal Handbook (LexisNexis), now in its 14th edition. In 2025 the San Diego Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society awarded him the Justice Antonin Scalia Award for Excellence on the Bench.