Scott L. Palk
United States federal judge for the Western District of Oklahoma
Scott Lawrence Palk (born 1967) is an American attorney and academic serving as the chief United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. He formerly served as the assistant dean at the University of Oklahoma College of Law.
Education and legal career
Palk is a 1985 graduate of Charles Page High School in Sand Springs, Oklahoma. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1989 from Oklahoma State University and a Juris Doctor in 1992 from the University of Oklahoma College of Law.
From 1992 to 2002, Palk served as an assistant district attorney for Cleveland County in Norman, Oklahoma, serving as first assistant district attorney from 1999 to 2002. From 2002 to 2011, he served as an assistant United States attorney in the Criminal Division of the United States Attorney's Office for the Western District of Oklahoma, holding a number of managerial roles beginning in 2004, including deputy criminal chief and anti-terrorism advisory council coordinator. Palk won Prosecutor of the Year awards in 1993 and 2004.
From 2011 until his confirmation as a federal judge, he served as the assistant dean for students and assistant general counsel at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. In addition to overseeing admissions and providing legal counsel, he served as a consultant to the University's Threat Assessment Review Committee, advising in areas of criminal threat assessment and legal access.
Federal judicial service
Expired district court nomination under Obama
On December 16, 2015, President Barack Obama nominated Palk to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, to the seat vacated by Judge Stephen P. Friot, who assumed senior status on December 1, 2014.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Scott L. Palk” is united States federal judge for the Western District of Oklahoma. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Scott, Palk and United, not as a finished interpretation.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q22095975. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967, 1985, 1989 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Scott L. Palk” 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.