Judith Merkle Riley is an American writer of historical and romance novels. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and teaches in the Department of Government at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California.

Born on January 14, 1942, Judith Astria Merkle grew up in Livermore, California. Her great-grandfather was a Swiss emigrant, who moved to the United States in 1860. Her uncle was the famous baseball player Fred Merkle. Her father, Theodore Charles Merkle was controller of Project Pluto and her brother Ralph C. Merkle is technological professor at a Computer science School.