Robert Drain

Robert Drain is a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of New York. 

Judge Drain received his B.A. degree cum laude with honors from Yale University in 1979 and his J.D. degree in 1984 from the Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar for three years.

At the time of his appointment in 2002, he was a partner in the Bankruptcy Department of the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where he represented debtors, trustees, secured and unsecured creditors, official and unofficial creditors committees, and buyers of distressed businesses and distressed debt in chapter 11 cases, out-of-court restructurings and bankruptcy-related litigation.  He also was actively involved in several transnational insolvency matters.

Judge Drain is a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and a member and board member of the American Bankruptcy Institute, a member the International Insolvency Institute, and a member and board member of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges.  He is a past member and secretary of the Bankruptcy and Reorganization Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.  He was an adjunct professor for several years at St. John’s University School of Law’s LLM in Bankruptcy Program and has lectured and written on numerous bankruptcy-related topics.

Since his appointment he has presided over such chapter 11 cases as Loral, RCN, Cornerstone, Refco, Allegiance Telecom, Delphi, Coudert Brothers, Frontier Airlines, Star Tribune, Reader’s Digest, A&P, Hostess Brands, Christian Brothers, and Momentive.  He also has presided over the ancillary or plenary cases, as the case may be, of Corporacion Durango, Satellites Mexicanas, Parmalat S. p. A. and its affiliated United States debtors, Varig S.A., Yukos (II), SphinX, Galvex Steel, TBS Shipping, Excel Maritime, and Nautilus and has served as the court-appointed mediator in a number of chapter 11 cases.

He is the author of a novel, The Great Work in the United States of America.