James M. Ideman
United States federal judge

James Merle Ideman (born April 2, 1931) is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Education and career
Born in Rockford, Illinois, Ideman received a Bachelor of Arts degree from The Citadel in 1953 and a Juris Doctor from the USC Gould School of Law in 1963. He served in the United States Army from 1949 to 1950, from 1953 to 1956, and from 1965 to 1984. From 1963 to 1964 he was a law clerk to superior court judge McIntyre Faries. He was a deputy district attorney of Los Angeles County, California from 1964 to 1979, and a judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, California from 1979 to 1984.
Federal judicial service
On May 24, 1984, Ideman was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to a seat on the United States District Court for the Central District of California vacated by Judge Lawrence Tupper Lydick. Ideman was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 15, 1984, and received his commission the same day. He assumed senior status on April 2, 1998, retiring fully on September 11, 1998.
References
Sources
James M. Ideman at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6138457. VIAF identifies the subject as 167979839. The Library of Congress control number is no2011020436. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931, 1953, 1963 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “James M. Ideman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.