Daniel Kelly

Despite having taken no public stance on the constitutionality of Wisconsin's existing 1849 law that bans abortion in all cases except for when abortion is performed to save the life of the mother, Kelly had also been endorsed by Wisconsin Right to Life, Wisconsin Family Action and Pro-Life Wisconsin, three anti-abortion groups.

Daniel Kelly (born February 25, 1964) is an American attorney and former judge who served as a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice from August 1, 2016, through July 31, 2020.

He moved to Waukesha, Wisconsin, in 1982 to attend Carroll College, where he graduated in 1986 with degrees in political science and Spanish.

He attended the evangelical Christian Regent University School of Law, where he was founding editor-in-chief of the law review, graduating in 1991.

After law school, Kelly clerked for Wisconsin Court of Appeals judge Ralph Adam Fine for one year, then for the United States Court of Federal Claims for four years.

From 1998 to 2013, Kelly worked as a litigator at Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren, a law firm headquartered in Milwaukee.

While there, he represented a variety of corporate and political clients.

In 1999, he represented University of Wisconsin student Scott Southworth in Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth, a United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of mandatory student activity fees to fund activist groups at public universities.

Later in his private practice career, he represented Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature in lawsuits over the 2010 legislative redistricting in Wisconsin.

Kelly left Reinhart in 2013 to serve as vice president and General Counsel for the Kern Family Foundation, a conservative nonprofit in Waukesha County.

In 2014, he left the Kern Family Foundation to co-found a private practice firm, Rogahn Kelly, LLC.

He stayed there until his appointment to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

He was appointed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in 2016 to fill the unexpired term of Justice David Prosser Jr., but lost election for a full term in 2020 to circuit judge Jill Karofsky by a margin of 10.5%.

He lost in a second attempt to win a seat in the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election to circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz by a margin of 11.2%.

Born in Santa Barbara, California, Kelly grew up in Arvada, Colorado.

After the announcement of the nearing retirement of Justice David Prosser Jr., in 2016, Kelly was appointed by Governor Scott Walker to serve as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Under Wisconsin law, the seat would come up for election on the next spring election when no other Wisconsin Supreme Court seat was up for election.

At the time, Walker received criticism for selecting a Justice with no prior judicial experience who held the fringe view that affirmative action was comparable to slavery.

In a 2017 case, Kelly wrote for a 5–2 majority holding that the City of Madison is forbidden under state statute from banning passengers from carrying firearms on city buses.

In a landmark 2018 administrative law case, Kelly wrote the Court's lead opinion, which held that the Court would no longer follow the practice of judicial deference to agencies' interpretations of their own rules in Wisconsin.

During his time on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Kelly came under fire for not recusing himself from multiple cases that involved organizations with which he had close ties.

As one example, in the days immediately preceding the decision Koschkee v. Taylor, Kelly received $1,000 contributions from board members of the non-profit conservative law firm, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, that was representing the petitioners in Koschkee v. Taylor.

Kelly would ultimately join the majority opinion that ruled in favor of the Petitioners.

Kelly also opposed a petition brought by over 50 retired Wisconsin judges to strengthen standards on when judges should remove themselves from cases because of a conflict of interest.

On May 28, 2019, Kelly officially announced his intent to run for a full ten-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

He faced two opponents in the race, Marquette University Law School professor Ed Fallone and Dane County Circuit Court judge Jill Karofsky.

He came in first in the February primary, but lost the April general election to Karofsky.

Justice Kelly ran for a full term on the court when it came up for election in 2020, but was defeated by current Wisconsin Circuit Court judge Jill Karofsky.

Justice Kelly's term in office ended July 31, 2020.

After losing the 2020 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Kelly joined a conservative nonprofit, the Institute for Reforming Government, as a senior fellow in constitutional governance.

While there, he was the author of the "Lawmaker's Manual for Executive Oversight," a guide for Wisconsin legislators to use their investigatory committee powers to hold executive branch officials accountable.

Since leaving the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Kelly has been vocal in his criticism of his former colleague, conservative justice Brian Hagedorn, for breaking with the court's conservative majority on several decisions.

Kelly accused Hagedorn of considering the political implications of his rulings instead of "following what the law says".

Kelly was paid $120,000 by the Wisconsin State Republican Party and the Republican National Committee as an attorney who worked on election issues in 2020 after his term with the Wisconsin Supreme Court ended.

In the weeks following the 2020 presidential election, he provided legal counsel to the Wisconsin GOP to overturn the 2020 election.

Former Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt said in a deposition that he and Kelly had "pretty extensive conversations" about the illegal fake elector scheme in Wisconsin that was one of the well-known attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.

In September 2022, Kelly announced that he would run for retiring justice Patience D. Roggensack's seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

He faced three opponents in the race, conservative Waukesha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Dorow and two liberal candidates, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz and Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell.

Kelly came in second in the February 2023 primary, advancing to the general election against Protasiewicz, which took place on April4, 2023.

Leading up to the February primary election, Kelly received financial support from influential political donors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, with Fair Courts America, the Super Pac largely bankrolled by the Uihleins, having spent $1.8 million on ads supporting Kelly, and an additional $40,000 of political contributions made to Kelly's campaign by the Uihleins.