Dr Victoria McCloud (Master McCloud) is a Former Master of the Senior Courts, Queen’s Bench Division and later King’s Bench Division. She recently stepped back from that into a portfolio practice, after a High Court judicial career just short of two decades, having presided over cases including defamation claims against Donald Trump, the ‘revenge porn’ case of Georgia Harrison v Stephen Bear, Nadim Zahawi MP’s suit against an Iranian publication, and was the first instance judge in the leading case on open justice, Cape Intermediate Holdings Ltd v Dring. She has also managed some of the most heinous historic sex abuse cases.

Since moving on from that judicial role she was appointed as a Legal Chair of the Medical Practitioners’ Tribunal to hear trials of serious misconduct in the medical and associate medical professions, with effect from Summer 2025.  She has maintained her international activity and speaking in fields as diverse AI and legal tech, electronic discovery, legal costs, diversity inclusion and equality, and historic abuse litigation reform. She is also a practising mediator in civil work via CADR, Westwood Mediation and Trust Mediation, and recently launched her own specialist company “Limelight Resolution” providing ADR in the creative industries such as TV, theatre, film and dance. She is a consultant for W-Legal Solicitors and an Associate member of Gatehouse Chambers. 

Her academic background was originally in experimental psychology, which is the field in which she obtained her doctorate specialising in computational aspects of how the human brain perceives in three dimensions, before turning to the law as a barrister and later as a judge.  She is the author of numerous academic and practitioner books on civil litigation, personal injury and surveillance and intelligence law as well as occasionally writing for academic journals. 

She has been recognised regularly in the media for her contributions to diversity and equality especially in the LGBTQ+ and women’s rights fields, including Attitude Magazine’s 101 LGBTQ+ trailblazers 2025, Independent Newspaper Pride List 2024, Dow Jones News "Pride of Finance" 2024, Women of the Year Awards 2021, Sunday Times, '50 women of the year' 2020, and is one of the 100 women in the First 100 Years archive.