Toby Heytens is a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, appointed in 2021 by President Biden. Originally from Superior, Wisconsin, and a first-generation lawyer, Judge Heytens attended Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the University of Virginia School of Law.

Judge Heytens began his career as a law clerk to Chief Judge Edward Becker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court. He next spent several years working in Washington, DC, first in private practice and then at the Department of Justice’s Office of the Solicitor General. From 2010 until 2018, Judge Heytens was a law professor at the University of Virginia, where he taught civil procedure, civil rights litigation, and the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and helped coach UVA’s three-time national champion trial advocacy team. From 2018 until 2021, Judge Heytens served as Solicitor General of Virginia, where he argued three times before the U.S. Supreme Court and served as lead counsel successfully defending the governor’s decision to remove the Robert E. Lee monument from Richmond’s Monument Avenue.  

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