Tinder joins the big leagues with seat on 7th Circuit

Path to the bench

A 1975 graduate of Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington, he landed his first job out of law school as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana. He had worked as a clerk in the office while in law school, with an undergraduate degree in business from Indiana University.

By the age of 26, Tinder was arguing before the 7th Circuit.

“Maybe it’s better to get to do it when you’re fairly new in your career, because you don’t know enough to know to be intimidated,” he said. “It was a great experience.”

He recalled an appeal he handled as a young federal prosecutor, appearing before a panel of judges that included now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark.

“That was a thrill,” Tinder said. “I liked being a lawyer; I liked being an advocate. That was really fun and challenging work. I would’ve been happy to do that the rest of my life.”

Tinder, who is the son of a former Marion County prosecutor, initially planned on becoming an accountant. But that plan quickly changed with his first accounting course in college, when he realized he “absolutely hated it.”

“My father was a lawyer, but it wasn’t as though he had steered me toward that. It just happened at the point that I realized accounting wasn’t for me,” Tinder said. “I was in my third year of undergraduate school and thought about other options, and law school sounded more interesting than going to work at the time.”

After two years as an assistant U.S. attorney, Tinder joined his father’s general practice, where he handled a variety of civil matters for both plaintiffs and defendants. While in private practice from 1977 to 1984, he served as a public defender in Marion County Criminal Court on a contract basis for a couple of years. Also during his stint in private practice, Tinder was second in command of the Marion County prosecutor’s office, where he served as chief trial deputy for about four years, averaging about 60 hours of work per week despite the position’s part-time job designation.

He was 34 when he became the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, nominated to the post in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan.

“That was a wonderful period of time to be a U.S. attorney. There were some really talented people who were U.S. attorneys around the country: Dan Webb, Tony Valukas, Rudy Giuliani, Bill Weld … Frank Keating … Joe DiGenova in D.C.,” Tinder said. “It was, in my estimation, kind of a golden era of U.S. attorneys — people who really got things done, who worked hard and who really made a difference in law enforcement throughout the country.”

Valukas, who now serves as chairman of Jenner & Block, said Tinder has a reputation as a judge whom practitioners want to try cases before.

“When the praise is uniform and everybody says he was fair, well-read, thorough and decisive, when you hear that repeated, you know the judge is doing a great job,” said Valukas, who served with Tinder on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee.

He also has a great sense of humor, his former colleagues said.

“Dry is the right term to use for him. He was just genuinely a fun person to be around,” Valukas said. “By reputation, he’s brought that to the courtroom. The proceedings are serious, but not overbearing in the way he conducts himself.”

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