In November 1992, President George Bush appointed Judge Satterfield to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He was sworn-in as Chief Judge on September 24, 2008.

Judge Satterfield was born in the District of Columbia. He graduated from St. John’s College High School in 1976 and from the University of Maryland in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. He received his Juris Doctor from the George Washington University National Law Center in 1983. After law school, Judge Satterfield worked as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Paul R. Webber, III, who was an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. In 1984, he was appointed an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. In that position, he served in the appellate, grand jury, misdemeanor and felony sections of the United States Attorney’s Office. At the time he left the United States Attorney’s Office, he was prosecuting homicide and sex offense cases.

In September 1988, Judge Satterfield joined the law firm of Sachs, Greenebaum and Tayler. While in private practice, he handled both civil and criminal matters in Superior Court and in the federal courts of Virginia, Maryland and Alabama. In 1991, he left private practice and returned to the United States Department of Justice as a trial attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section. In that section, he prosecuted organized crime and labor racketeering crimes in the federal courts of the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.

After he was appointed to the bench in 1992, Judge Satterfield served in the Criminal, Civil and Family Divisions, and the Domestic Violence Unit. In 1994, while serving in the Criminal Division, Judge Satterfield was one of the Court’s first Drug Court judges. Between January 1998 and December 1999, Judge Satterfield served as Presiding Judge of the Domestic Violence Unit. The Domestic Violence Unit was established in 1996 and handles criminal, intrafamily and domestic relations cases involving domestic violence. During this time, Judge Satterfield served as a member of a National Advisory Committee on Domestic Violence, which developed model guidelines for the creation and operation of domestic violence courts.

In October 2001, Judge Satterfield was designated Presiding Judge of the Court’s Family Division. After the enactment of the District of Columbia Family Court Act in January 2002, Judge Satterfield was designated Presiding Judge of the Family Court, a position he held until December 2005. In this capacity, Judge Satterfield handled the administrative functions of the Family Court, which included chairing the Family Court Management and Oversight Committee, the Family Court Implementation Committee, and the Family Court Advisory Rules Committee. Judge Satterfield served on several mayoral committees addressing issues related to mental health, child welfare, and juvenile justice. He served as Vice Chairperson of the District of Columbia Juvenile Justice Reform Task Force and as Co-Chair of the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative Committee and the Citywide Truancy Task Force, which launched a Middle School Truancy Court Diversion Program in a District of Columbia Public School in the fall of 2005.

Judge Satterfield is a member of the Joint Committee on Judicial Administration, which is the policy-making body of the D.C. Courts. He was a member of the Superior Court’s Strategic Planning Leadership Council, the Superior Court Rules Committee, the Judicial Education Committee, and the Committee on the Selection and Tenure of Magistrate Judges.

Judge Satterfield was a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. He is currently on the Board of Trustees of the National Conference of Metropolitan Courts and the Board of Directors of the Advanced Science & Technology Adjudication Resource Center. He is also a member of the National Judicial Institute on Domestic Violence’s Steering Committee and serves on the faculty of the NJIDV, which conducts educational programs for judges on domestic violence matters.

Since 1991, Judge Satterfield has been an adjunct professor at the Catholic University Columbus School of Law where he taught Criminal Trial Practice and Advanced Criminal Procedure. He was a professorial lecturer in the L.L.M. litigation program at the George Washington University National Law Center for four years.