Judge Hayden is a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of New Jersey, and a 1975 graduate of Seton Hall University School of Law. She served as a judicial law clerk to New Jersey Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert L. Clifford, and then served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey before entering private practice. She was appointed to the New Jersey Superior Court in 1991, and in 1997 she was appointed to the federal bench. She sits in Newark, New Jersey.

Katharine Sweeney Hayden is on the Advisory Board for The Sedona Conference.