Judge Rachel Theora McGuckian is a Rockville, Maryland native and served as judicial law clerk to the Honorable Deborah K. Chasanow of the United States District Court for Maryland, Southern Division.  Prior to being appointed to the Circuit Court for Montgomery County in 2022, where she is designated to the Business & Technology Court, Judge McGuckian spent 29 years in private practice, including the last 25 with Miles & Stockbridge.  In private practice she represented businesses including public companies, financial institutions, real estate developers, government contractors and family enterprises, and individual clients in divorce, custody, real estate, tax and contested estate litigation, and also represented indigent individuals in criminal cases. Judge McGuckian served two terms on the Miles & Stockbridge Board of Directors and was Managing Principal of the firm’s Rockville office, and served on the Maryland State Board of Elections (2009-2014) and the Maryland State Ethics Commission (2014-2015).

Judge McGuckian received the highest honors available to a trial lawyer in North America upon her election to the American College of Trial Lawyers, a select group limited to the top 1% of the lawyers in each state.  She was named by her peers as a “Super Lawyer” every year since 2009, and repeatedly named one of the Top 100 Super Lawyers in Maryland and in Washington, D.C., one of the Top 50 Women Super Lawyers, one of the Best Lawyers in America, and to Bethesda Magazine’s Top Attorneys List. Judge McGuckian is an officer of the International Bar Association’s Professional Ethics Committee and has presented on legal ethics issues at conferences in North America, Europe, South America, Asia and Africa.  She has taught at the University of Baltimore School of Law and has served as a faculty member at the National Institute of Trial Advocacy’s Georgetown University Law Center program for two decades.