Victoria McCloud

McCloud is a Master of the Senior Courts, Queen’s Bench Division. She was appointed in 2010. McCloud was the youngest ever Master in the High Court, at age 40 in 2010, and the second female Master.

She has presided over a full range of civil cases in the Queen’s Bench Division. McCloud has presided over several high-profile cases, which have involved Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn, Katie Price, and Andrew Mitchell MP.

In 2016 McCloud began consulting with professionals working in the historic abuse field, hoping to improve the experience of justice for victims as well as for defendants and insurers. She set up the Historic Abuse Lawyers' forum (HALF) to look at the possibility of alternative approaches to trial and resolution. She has promoted the ideas that in the historic abuse field the court should try claims in a way that would minimize causing any further harm.

McCloud had previously been a barrister at Coram Chambers. From 2006, she was a Deputy Costs Judge / Taxing Master. She was appointed a Queen's Bench Master in June 2010 and also re-appointed as a Costs Judge / Taxing Master in 2017.

She lives in London with National Health Service psychiatrist Annie McCloud, who has been her civil partner since 2006.

McCloud, who is also a chartered psychologist, authored (as Victoria Williams) an academic letter in 2003 to a Royal College of Psychiatry journal that considered standards of care for transgender people and highlighted errors in a paper published in the journal.

McCloud graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1990 with a degree in Experimental Psychology and obtained a doctorate in 1993 in human visual system science. A year later, she completed a law conversion course and was called to the bar in 1995, where she practised under her maiden name of Victoria Williams.

Victoria McCloud (born 1969) is a British judge. She was the youngest Master in the High Court of England and Wales when she was appointed in 2006 as a deputy and then as a full judge in 2010. She is also a chartered psychologist and legal author.

Other legal judicial decisions by her include asbestos related disease cases, such as Yates v HMRC, Constitutional rights of Access to Justice and access to court proceedings, modern slavery, defamation law, equitable interpleader, and national security. Her decision in Warsama and Gannon v FCO and others considered UK Constitutional issues under the Bill of Rights 1689, Parliamentary Privilege, free speech and human rights.