Robert Drain is a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of New York.

Judge Drain earned his B.A. degree cum laude from Yale University in 1979 and his J.D. degree in 1984 from Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar for three years.

At the time of his judicial appointment in 2002 he was a partner in the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison. Judge Drain has practiced bankruptcy law from the beginning of his career, first with the New York firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and then at Paul, Weiss, where, in Chapter 11 cases, restructurings and litigation, he represented debtors, trustees, creditors, creditors’ committees, and buyers of distressed businesses. He was active in transnational insolvency matters and in the area of bankruptcy acquisitions.

Judge Drain is a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, where he was a past secretary of its Committee on Bankruptcy and Corporate Reorganization, the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, and the International Insolvency Institute. He has lectured and written articles on numerous bankruptcy-related topics and is an adjunct professor at St. John's University Law School.