Hon. Jeffrey Kremers (Ret.)

Jeffrey Kremers retired after 25 plus years as a Circuit Judge for Milwaukee County. Judge Kremers served as Chief Judge from 2008-2015. He had also been the presiding judge in the felony, civil, and misdemeanor divisions.

He spent 11 years in private practice with the Fox, Oneill, and Shannon law firm handling a variety of civil litigation matters. Prior to that he was an assistant district attorney for Milwaukee County assigned to, and director of, the Sensitive Crimes Unit.

Judge Kremers has been a frequent instructor to the judiciary, both nationally and in Wisconsin, on a variety of topics including domestic violence, sexual assault, criminal law, procedural justice, and sexual predators. He was selected as the Wisconsin State Bar’s Judge of the year for 2013 and received the Bar Association’s Judicial Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. He has been a faculty member and past associate dean of the Wisconsin Judicial College.

Judge Kremers is a member of the faculty for the National Judicial Institute on Domestic Violence. He has also worked with the Center for Court Innovation on the issue of procedural justice. He was a member of a statewide committee promoting the use of evidence based decision making for the judicial system in connection with a grant from the National Institute of Corrections. He served as chair of the Director of State Court’s STOP grant committee charged with making recommendations on how to spend the State’s share of VAWA funds for training of Judges and other court system officials on Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Stalking.

While Chief Judge, Milwaukee County instituted a change in protocol for making custody release determinations in criminal cases. The use of a risk based instrument instead of a charge based methodology is currently being adopted by a number of Wisconsin Counties. Judge Kremers is a frequent instructor on this issue as well.

Judge Kremers helped institute, with a number of other Judges, Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorneys and Public Defenders an annual series of conferences on the issue of race in the criminal justice system.