Pierre Leval is a United States Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At the time of his appointment in 1993, he was a United States District Court Judge in the Southern District of New York.

Judge Leval received his B.A. degree from Harvard College in 1959 and his J.D. degree magna cum laude in 1963 from the Harvard Law School, where he served as Note Editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Judge Leval served in the U.S. Army in 1959. He was a law clerk for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1963 until 1964. Judge Leval was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1964 until 1968, serving there as Chief Appellate Attorney from 1967 to 1968. From 1969 until 1975, Judge Leval was in private law practice as an associate and then a partner in the New York firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. He joined the New York County District Attorney's Office in 1975, where he served first as First Assistant District Attorney, and subsequently as Chief Assistant District Attorney. In 1977, he was appointed to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Judge Leval is a member of the Adjunct Faculty of the New York University School of Law. He was awarded the Hillmon Memorial Fellowship by the University of Wisconsin in 1988; the Donald R. Brace Memorial Lectureship by the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. in 1989; the Fowler Harper Memorial Fellowship by Yale Law School in 1992; the Melville Nimmer Lectureship by UCLA Law School in 1997; the Learned Hand Medal of the Federal Bar Council in 1997; and the University of Connecticut School of Law's Intellectual Property Keynote Lectureship for 2001. He assumed Senior Judge status in 2002.

Judge Leval is a native of New York.