Judith Pirscher has been State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since January 2022. Before the move to Berlin she was Regional Commissioner of the Detmold administrative district (North Rhine-Westphalia). Between 2011 and November 2019, she was responsible for construction and property management at Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) and served as managing director of the municipal pension funds of Westfalen-Lippe.

Ms Pirscher has many years of experience in politics at federal and Land level as well as in various Land administrations. She worked for the environmental policy spokeswoman of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) parliamentary group in the Bundestag, initially in Bonn and then in Berlin. She was also deputy secretary and legal advisor to the FDP group in the Düsseldorf regional parliament. She headed the Minister’s office at the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia where she was responsible for political coordination. She then moved to the Land Office for the Protection of the Constitution before becoming permanent representative of the Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information of Land North Rhine-Westphalia in October 2010.

Ms Pirscher studied law in Bayreuth. After completing practical legal training and the second state examination, she practised law in Düsseldorf.