Gregory M. Sleet, a native of New York City, is a graduate of Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia and Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, New Jersey, where he was an Earl Warren Legal Scholar. He received his Juris Doctorate in 1976.
On April 27, 1998, Judge Sleet was confirmed by the United States Senate to the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.
He was sworn-in as the first African- American to become a Judge of that Court on September 28, 1998, and served as Chief Judge from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2014.
Judge Sleet has had a varied professional experience in the law consisting primarily of civil and criminal litigation and corporate legal work. From 1992-1994, he served as in- house counsel in the legal department of Hercules Incorporated. Prior to that, he was a Deputy Attorney General for the State of Delaware and, prior to that, practiced law in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for fourteen years — six of those as an assistant public defender with the Defender Association of Philadelphia.
At age 43, Judge Sleet took the oath of office on Monday, June 13, 1994, to become the first African-American U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware. In January of 1995, he was appointed by United States Attorney General Janet Reno to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee for a two-year term. The AGAC is a group of U.S. Attorneys from around the country that meets regularly in Washington, D.C. to assist and advise the Attorney General in setting policy and strategic direction for the U.S. Department of Justice. On August 4th of 1995, Ms. Reno further honored U.S. Attorney Sleet by naming him the Vice Chair of the Committee for the 1995-96 session. Additionally, Judge Sleet is the 1994 Distinguished Service Award recipient of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Central Delaware Branch. In 1998, Delaware Today magazine selected him as Delawarean of the Year. In 2000, Judge Sleet was named one of “Fifty of the Finest” graduates in the first fifty years of Rutgers University – Camden Division. In 2014, Judge Sleet received the annual award for Outstanding Public Service from the New York Intellectual Property Law Association. He was also the Philadelphia Intellectual Property Law Association’s honoree in 2014. In June of this year Judge Sleet became the 70th recipient, and first African American, of the New Jersey Intellectual Property Law Association’s Jefferson Medal for exceptional contributions to the field of intellectual property law.
Beginning in 2006-2007, Judge Sleet has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law teaching courses in Patent Litigation at the Schools of Law at Duke, Rutgers, and Widener University (now Widener University Delaware Law School). Judge Sleet was an original member of the committee that drafted the first set of Model Criminal Jury Instructions for the Third Circuit. During his 20 years on the federal bench, Judge Sleet presided over thousands of complex civil cases and hundreds of criminal cases including more than 100 civil trials and more than 30 criminal trials. A substantial majority of his civil trial work involved intellectual property, principally patent cases.
Judge Sleet was frequently sought after speaker for panels dedicated to the subject of patent law/litigation. Examples include: the USPTO, the Federal Circuit Bar Association, Practicing Law Institute seminars, the Sedona Conference, the New York Intellectual Property Law Association, the USC Gould School of Law Intellectual Property Institute, American Conference Institute’s Paragraph IV Disputes Judges’ Panel, the Harvard and Stanford Law Schools Intellectual Property conferences, and the Patent Court of South Korea’s 1st International IP Conference.