Klaus Tolksdorf (born 14 November 1948) is a German legal scholar who served as the eighth President of the Federal Court of Justice of Germany from 2008 to 2014 as well as an ad litem judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
After getting the Abitur in Wiesbaden in June 1967 he became a police officer in North Rhine-Westphalia until 1970 before he started studying law at the University of Bonn between 1969 and 1974.
After that he had his judicial traineeship, the so-called “Referendariat” at the Higher Regional Court of Cologne (“Landgericht”).
During 1985 and 1988 he worked at the 6th civil panel of the German Federal Court of Justice and later at the local president office.
Then he worked as a research assistant at the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (“Bundesverfassungsgericht”) until 1991.