Robert J. Kressel was appointed a bankruptcy judge by the district court on December 6, 1982 and reappointed by the court of appeals on December 5, 1986.  Judge Kressel originally sat in St. Paul but moved to Minneapolis on January 1, 1984.  Judge Kressel served as the district's second chief judge from 1986 - 1993.  Since 1996, he has also been a member of the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Eighth Circuit.

Judge Kressel was born June 14, 1947, in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Judge Kressel was in private practice from 1972 to 1979, also serving as a Hennepin County Conciliation Court Referee and a hearing examiner for the State of Minnesota.  From 1979 to 1982, Judge Kressel was with the United States Department of Justice, serving as a bankruptcy analyst and Assistant United States Trustee for the Districts of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Robert J. Kressel has been a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Minnesota since 1982.  He has also been a judge of the United States Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Eighth Circuit since its creation in 1996.  He is currently its chief judge.  Before his appointment, Judge Kressel was in private practice for seven years and with the Department of Justice for three years, in the United States Trustee’s Office.Judge Kressel has served as a member of the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules of the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Eighth Circuit's Gender Fairness Task Force.  In the past, he has been an adjunct professor at Hamline University School of Law and William Mitchell College of Law.  He is currently an adjunct professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and a Contributing Author of Collier on Bankruptcy. He is a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy.