Myrna Pérez was sworn in as a United States Circuit Court Judge for the Second Circuit in November 2021. From 2006 until her appointment, Judge Pérez served in various roles at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University (NYU) School of Law, most recently as the Director of their Voting Rights and Elections Program. She has been a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School since 2016, where she teaches a seminar on election law, and she previously served as an Adjunct Professor of Clinical Law at NYU School of Law from 2013 to 2015. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Judge Pérez was a Civil Rights Litigation Fellow at Relman, Dane & Colfax, a civil rights law firm in Washington, D.C., from 2005 to 2006.

Judge Pérez served as a law clerk for Judge Anita B. Brody on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 2003 to 2004, and for Judge Julio M. Fuentes on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 2004 to 2005.

Prior to law school, she was a Presidential Management Fellow, serving as a policy analyst for the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Active in her different communities, Judge Pérez has served on local and national boards of directors for nonprofit organizations and was chair of the Election Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association. She holds formal and informal positions in her church, and with local community service organizations.

Among other awards and honors, she was awarded the Latina Lawyer of the Year Award by the Hispanic National Bar Association in 2021, the Breaking the Glass Ceiling Award by the Leadership Institute for Women of Color attorneys in 2021, the Excellence in Academia Award by the Puerto Rican Bar Association in 2011, the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Public Service by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1998, and was named one of "50 Hispanic Influentials" by Hispanic Business in 2014.

Judge Pérez is a native Texan, born and raised in San Antonio. She received her J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2003, her M.P.P. in 1998 from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and her B.A. from Yale University in 1996.