Justice Nolan of Burlington, Vermont in Chittenden County was born and raised in Westford and South Burlington, Vermont. She attended Westford Elementary, Mater Christi, and Rice High Schools in Chittenden County before graduating from the University of Vermont (BA, summa cum laude, 2001). She attended Boston College Law School (JD, magna cum laude, 2004) where she served on the Boston College Law Review. She clerked for the Honorable F. Dennis Saylor IV, of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, from 2004 to 2005. She worked as an associate attorney in the Litigation Department of Goodwin in Boston (2005-2009), where she focused on complex civil litigation and criminal defense. In 2009, she joined the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, where she served as a state prosecutor in Lowell, Massachusetts. From 2010-2017, Justice Nolan served an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Criminal Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont. In that role, she prosecuted a variety of federal crimes and handled appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She became the United States Attorney for Vermont in 2017 following the joint recommendation of U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy and Governor Phil Scott. She held this position until 2021, when she joined the Burlington Law Firm Sheehey Furlong & Behm as a Director and member of the firm’s Litigation Department. In that role, she practiced before the Vermont Supreme Court and as a civil litigator and criminal defense attorney in federal court and in the Civil, Criminal, Family, and Probate Divisions of the Vermont Superior Court. As a Director at Sheehey, she also served on the federal Criminal Justice Act panel. In January 2026, Governor Phil Scott nominated her to serve on the Vermont Supreme Court, and she was sworn in on February 3, 2026, as the Court’s 138th Justice. Justice Nolan resides in Burlington with her partner Jill Barcia.

• University of Vermont (BA, summa cum laude, 2001)
• Boston College Law School (JD, magna cum laude, 2004)