Cyrus Y. Chung’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Korea, and they had a vision about which paths would offer the surest bet for a good life.

“Asian immigrant parents, chasing a better life, think themselves very generous because they offer their kids three whole career options: You can be a doctor, you can be a lawyer or you can be an engineer,” said Chung. “Before I was a lawyer, I used to write air traffic control software. So, I have done two out of the three.”

Speaking on Friday at the Alfred A. Arraj U.S. Courthouse in downtown Denver, Chung was ceremonially sworn-in as one of the seven full-time magistrate judges for Colorado’s federal trial court. Chung has been on the bench since last month, succeeding retired Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael E. Hegarty.

In contrast to the district judges, who the president nominates and the U.S. Senate confirms for life, magistrate judges are screened by a selection panel, hired by the district judges and serve for eight-year terms. They tend to focus more on administrative and preliminary matters, but can perform most of the same functions as the district judges, including handling civil cases on their own.

For the first time during the Biden administration, magistrate judges were appointed to be district judges in Colorado amid a push for professional and demographic diversity on the bench.

At Chung’s ceremony, known as an investiture, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Philip A. Brimmer shared Chung’s accomplishments: He majored in computer science and minored in business administration and Mandarin Chinese. He wakes up at 5 a.m. to study Spanish or Korean. He passed the patent bar, which is “really hard.”

“He is an American success story,” said Brimmer.

Prior to his time in Colorado, Chung worked at the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.

The sense of duty to repay his parents’ adoptive country, Chung said, “made me enter public service a decade ago as an assistant DA at a job The Boston Globe liked to advertise made less than the janitors at the courthouse.”

After being hired at Colorado’s U.S. Attorney’s Office, the cases Chung prosecuted included a defendant who pleaded guilty to aiming a laser pointer at a police aircraft, a defendant who threatened to kill a public official and detonate bombs in Crowley and Otero counties, plus more traditional narcotics cases. In 2022, then-U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan selected Chung to oversee the federal response to election-related threats.

Matthew T. Kirsch, who was Colorado’s acting U.S. attorney during Chung’s tenure and is now in a high-ranking role at the Denver District Attorney’s Office, described how Chung wrote computer code to fully automate their office’s process for assembling document packets. 

Kirsch said Chung left the federal prosecutor’s office for the bench at a time when he could capitalize on his experience, “yet avoid any of the current controversies associated with” the U.S. Department of Justice.

“At this moment when the justice system as a whole is under a little bit of fire, every single person I worked with the whole time I was at the Department of Justice — whether it was the people in the office … the judges, the probation officers — every single one of those people was committed to seeking justice,” Kirsch said. “I can assure everyone here that Cyrus embodies that commitment to seeking justice.”

Andrew Ho, president of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Colorado, called Chung a “superstar among superstars” who turned the group’s continuing legal education committee into a “well-oiled machine.” Ho also said it was meaningful to the Asian and Pacific American community for Chung to be on the bench.

“As a criminal defense attorney speaking to a federal prosecutor, it wasn’t uncommon that we didn’t always see eye to eye,” Ho said. But “you could tell he valued differing opinions. Almost asked for them, as if it was a challenge to him.”

“And if you could convince him, he was always willing to change his position,” Ho added.

In his speech, Chung described his father, who joined the U.S. Army, became a citizen and went to college on the GI Bill, and his mother, who studied graphic design and went back to school once in the U.S. Both of them died from cancer years ago.

“I only wish that they could have been here,” he said. “Because I, unlike them, was a natural-born citizen. So, they could tell me that the goal was supposed to be president, not federal judge.”

In attendance at the Denver courthouse were Chief Judge Jerome A. Holmes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit; U.S. District Court Judges Robert E. Blackburn, Christine M. Arguello, William J. Martínez, Daniel D. Domenico, Regina M. Rodriguez, Charlotte N. Sweeney, Nina Y. Wang and S. Kato Crews; U.S. Magistrate Judges Scott T. Varholak, Kathryn A. Starnella and Timothy P. O’Hara; Acting U.S. Attorney J. Bishop Grewell; and Federal Public Defender Virginia L. Grady.

Afterward, there was a reception at the 10th Circuit’s courthouse, which Chung’s in-laws paid for.