When Donald Trump appears before District Judge Tanya Chutkan to face the host of charges brought against him for his role in 2020 election interference, he might recognise a familiar foe.

In 2021, Judge Chutkan blocked his efforts to stop a Congressional committee’s bid to access reams of his administration’s White House papers with the memorable phrase: “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not president.”

The move gave new life to the congressional investigation, the results of which came full circle when the case brought against Mr Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith was randomly handed to her.

Her assignment may worry Mr Trump’s legal team. Over the past two years, the 61-year-old has won a reputation for harsh sentences for those convicted of participation in the riots.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, she moved to the US to attend George Washington University before moving on to law school at the University of Pennsylvania.

For more than a decade she worked as a public defender in Washington DC where she “argued several appellate cases and tried over 30 cases, including numerous serious felony matters”, her biography says.

In 2014 President Barack Obama nominated her to the US District Court for the District of Columbia. She was confirmed by the Senate in a 95-0 vote.

In this role, she has seen dozens of people accused of participation in the 6 January riots appear before her.

And while some of Judge Chutkan’s colleagues have been more outspoken in their criticism of Mr Trump’s role in the riot – with one judge calling the Republican a “charlatan” – few have handed down harsher sentences to those convicted of wrongdoing in the riots.

There have been just a handful of occasions where judges have supported longer prison sentences than those recommended by the justice department. Judge Chutkan has been the judge most likely to do so.

That included an Ohio couple accused of entering the Capitol building “through a broken window” during the riot. She gave the pair 20 and 14-day jail terms respectively, despite prosecutors merely seeking house arrest.

Of the 31 defendants who have come before her, Judge Chutkan has sentenced every one of them to at least some jail time, according to a Washington Post tally.

And she has been remarkably candid when sentencing defendants to hefty punishments.

“It is not patriotism, it is not standing up for America to stand up for one man – who knows full well that he lost – instead of the Constitution he was trying to subvert,” she said at a sentencing hearing last year.

Another defendant was told bluntly that they had engaged in “violent attempted overthrow of the government… and it almost succeeded”.

Explaining her approach, Judge Chutkan has previously said that it “has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort, is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment”.

Nonetheless, she has previously expressed frustration that people who had knowingly lied to Mr Trump’s supporters had avoided charges.

“You have made a very good point,” she said during one sentencing hearing in 2021, “that the people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged”.