Matthew F. Kennelly

Matthew F. Kennelly (born October 6, 1956) is a federal district court judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He gained widespread attention when he presiding over the case of ACLU v. AT&T in 2006, "a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois on behalf of author Studs Terkel and other activists who said their constitutional rights were violated because of an NSA program of gathering phone company records." See NSA Wiretapping.

The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government's intelligence activities.

Judge Kennelly ruled that Terkel and the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit did not show that their particular records were seen by the government; therefore, they had no standing in suing the government.