Judge Som Ramrup
President
Association of Adminstrative Law Judges
Judge Ramrup has been an administrative law judge (ALJ) since July 2016 with the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Office of Hearings Operations in New York City (New York Varick). As an ALJ, Judge Ramrup adjudicates disability benefits and non-disability cases that require a decision after an opportunity for a hearing. Since January 2022, she has served as the President of Judicial Council No. 1 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, AFL-CIO, which represents over 1000 non-supervisory SSA ALJs. Judicial Council 1 is also known as the Association of Administrative Law Judges (AALJ). Before becoming an ALJ, Judge Ramrup spent 17 years at SSA’s Office of the General Counsel (OGC) and was appointed the Deputy Regional Chief Counsel in New York City in 2011. As Deputy Regional Chief Counsel, she supervised approximately 50 OGC attorneys and handled an expansive range of legal issues for all agency component clients, including supervising significant litigation, providing legal advice to client components and interacting with outside stakeholders, such as the federal district court judges and their staff, the Department of Justice, various United States Attorney’s Offices, and the plaintiffs’ bar. Prior to that, she defended SSA in federal court as a Special Assistant United States Attorney as well as before the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Federal Labor Relations Authority. Judge Ramrup earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics from SUNY-Binghamton in 1989 and her Juris Doctor from Cornell Law School in 1992.
Judge Ramrup is appearing on behalf of the AALJ. She is not speaking on behalf of SSA. The views expressed are her own and those of AALJ and do not necessarily represent the views of SSA or the United States Government.
