Forde Fairchild grew up in Terril, Iowa. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame, and the University of North Dakota School of Law. While at the University of North Dakota School of Law, he participated in a study abroad program reading law at the University of Oslo, Norway’s Faculty of Law.
After law school, he clerked for Chief Justice Gerald VandeWalle of the North Dakota Supreme Court and Judge Kermit E. Bye of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
After his judicial clerkships, he was recruited by the United States Department of Justice, through the Attorney General’s Honors Program, which has been described as the most selective and competitive hiring process within the civilian U.S. government.
At the United States Department of Justice, Forde Fairchild has served as a Trial Lawyer in Washington D.C.; a Special Deputy Marshal and Deputy Justice Attaché in Baghdad and Mosul, Iraq; a Special Deputy Marshal and Justice Attaché in Kabul, Afghanistan; and as an Assistant United States Attorney – a federal prosecutor -- in the Northern District of Iowa (which includes his current duty station of Sioux City, Iowa).
He won the 2015 and 2022 Sioux City, Iowa Police Department’s “Chief’s Appreciation Award”; a 2016 “USDOJ--ATF National Honor Award;” a 2016 “National Federal Law Enforcement Officers’ Association Group Achievement Award;” and numerous other awards from the United States Department of State, United States Department of Justice, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, and other governmental and non-governmental organizations.