He was raised in Toledo, Ohio,[1] where his father, Raj Thapar, owns a heating and air-conditioning supply business.

She sold her successful business after the September 11 attacks and chose to serve as a civilian clinical social worker assigned to assist veterans.

Thapar was then an attorney at the law firm of Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., from 1997 to 1999[4] where he volunteered to represent the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty pro bono.

[4] He returned to private practice at the Squire, Sanders & Dempsey firm in Cincinnati, Ohio from 2001 to 2002 before entering a life of public service.

He led the successful investigation and prosecution of a conspiracy ring to provide illegal immigrants with fraudulent driver's licenses.

[13][14] According to the Trump administration, that appointment made Thapar the first United States federal judge of South Asian descent.

[13] Thapar began his career "First in Ohio as a line prosecutor pursuing drug dealers, gang members, and terrorist financiers.

2011)), Thapar wrote about the humble penny, which "tend[s] to sit at the bottom of change jars or vanish into the cracks between couch cushions.

"[21] On March 21, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Thapar to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

[36] The Lexington Herald-Leader reported when Thapar was nominated to the 6th Circuit that "lawyers across the political spectrum praised [him] as a highly intellectual, thoughtful and hard-working judge.

Thapar was included in a list of individuals that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump "would consider as potential replacements for Justice Scalia at the United States Supreme Court.

"[60][61] After the June 2018 announcement by sitting Justice Anthony Kennedy that he would retire from the court, Thapar remained on a Trump "short-list.

Raised culturally Hindu, Thapar converted to Catholicism upon his marriage to Kim Schulte, a Kentucky real estate agent.