The Honorable Donna Phillips Currault serves as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana.  Before joining the federal bench, she was a member of Gordon, Arata, Montgomery Barnett, McCollam, Duplantis & Eagan, LLC, where she handled complex commercial litigation matters including class and collective actions, business disputes, and business torts.  She regularly represented employers in claims brought under federal and state anti-discrimination statutes and advised clients on employment agreements and non-competition/non-solicitation issues, prepared policies and handbooks, and conducted training on employment matters.  Before joining Gordon, Arata, she served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Morey L. Sear, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, from 1989-1990. 

Judge Currault graduated magna cum laude from Tulane University School of Law in 1989 and was selected for Order of the Coif.  While in law school, she was a Managing Editor and member of the Tulane Law Review.  She also served as a Senior Fellow for Tulane Law School’s Legal Research and Writing program. 

Judge Currault is a Life Fellow of the Federal Bar and American Bar Foundations and a Fellow of the Louisiana Bar Foundation and Litigation Counsel of America.  She is a member of the Tulane Law Review Advisory Board, the St. Thomas More Inn of Court, and the Federal Magistrate Judges Association.  Judge Currault is a Past President of the New Orleans Chapter of the Federal Bar Association (2021-22), former member of the NO Chapter FBA Board of Directors (2002-2023), and past Chair of the FBA’s Labor & Employment Section (2015-16), past Chair of the Louisiana Board of Legal Specialization’s Employment Law Advisory Commission.  She former served as the Code I Examiner and is currently on the Louisiana Committee on Bar Admissions Testing Committee. 

While in private practice, Judge Currault was rated AV® Preeminent™ by Martindale-Hubbell and listed in Best Lawyers in America (Commercial Litigation and Employment Law), Chambers USA Leading Lawyers in Labor & Employment, SuperLawyers Louisiana (Top 25 Women Lawyers and Labor & Employment), Benchmark Top 250 Women in Litigation, and New Orleans “Top Lawyers” in Labor and Employment Law.  New Orleans CityBusiness selected her as a 2020 Leader in the Law honoree.