Daniel Kelly (born February 25, 1964) is an American attorney and former judge who served as a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice from August 1, 2016, through July 31, 2020.

[2][3] He lost in a second attempt to win a seat in the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election to circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz by a margin of 11.2%.

[7] Kelly left Reinhart in 2013 to serve as vice president and General Counsel for the Kern Family Foundation, a conservative nonprofit in Waukesha County.

[8] At the time, Walker received criticism for selecting a Justice with no prior judicial experience who held the fringe view that affirmative action was comparable to slavery.

[12] During his time on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Kelly came under fire for not recusing himself from multiple cases that involved organizations with which he had close ties.

He faced two opponents in the race, Marquette University Law School professor Ed Fallone and Dane County Circuit Court judge Jill Karofsky.

[23] In September 2022, Kelly announced that he would run for retiring justice Patience D. Roggensack's seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

[32][33] The day after this speech, local political columnist Daniel Bice opined that there was "no bigger or sorer [election] loser" than Kelly.

Bice added that Kelly's legacy in Wisconsin would now focus on his being "the first Republican to put two liberals on the state Supreme Court single-handedly.

[36] He has argued that U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which ruled that bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional, was illegitimate.

[36] In 2014, Kelly wrote that slavery and affirmative action both "spring from the same taproot" and that "neither can exist without the foundational principle that it is acceptable to force someone into an unwanted economic relationship.