Kevin Burke is a District Court Judge in Hennepin County, Minnesota. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Center for State Courts, and presently serves as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Minnesota.Judge Burke is currently the chief judge of the Hennepin County bench, the largest district in the state. He was appointed to the bench on 1984 and was elected in 1986, 1992, 1998. He graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School. Before becoming a trial court judge, he was an assistant public defender and in private practice. For a number of years, Judge Burke chaired the Minnesota State Board of Public Defense. During his tenure, he was one of the leaders in the effort to improve and expand the state's public defender system.In 1998 Judge Burke was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by H.E.A.R.T., for leadership in the cause of freedom for people afflicted with chemical dependency, and in 1997, he received a the Director's Community Leadership Award from the U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation.