She was previously an anchor at Court TV and a legal analyst/commentator for Fox News and ABC. She is also known as the former wife of current California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom and was First Lady of San Francisco during Newsom's first year as mayor. Guilfoyle is a second-generation American, born in San Francisco to a Puerto Rican mother and an Irish father. She grew up in the Mission District and Westlake and is a graduate of Mercy High School. Guilfoyle's mother, Mercedes, taught special education, and died of leukemia when Guilfoyle was ten. Her father, Tony, was born in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland; he was a real estate investor and an advisor to Mayor Newsom, until his death in 2008.
Guilfoyle graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, Davis, and received her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of San Francisco School of Law in 1994. While in law school, she interned at the San Francisco district attorney's office. She also modeled for local department stores, including Macy's, and modeled Victoria's Secret lingerie in a bridal magazine. She also studied at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland. While there, she was published for her research in international children's rights and European Economic Community law. After law school, Guilfoyle briefly worked as a prosecutor in San Francisco, but lost her job in 1996 when Terence Hallinan was elected District Attorney and fired fourteen of the city's prosecutors.
Guilfoyle then spent four years in Los Angeles as a Deputy District Attorney, working on adult and juvenile cases, including narcotics, domestic violence, kidnapping, robbery, arson, sexual assault and homicide cases. She received several awards at the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, including Prosecutor of the Month. In 2000, Guilfoyle was re-hired by Hallinan in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, where she served as an Assistant District Attorney from 2000 to 2004. While Assistant D.A., she and lead prosecutor James Hammer earned a conviction in the 2002 case People v. Noel and Knoller, a second-degree murder trial involving a dog mauling that received international attention. In January 2004, Guilfoyle moved to New York to host the program Both Sides on Court TV, as well as to take a job as a legal analyst on Anderson Cooper 360.
Guilfoyle joined Fox News Channel in February 2006, as host of the weekend show The Lineup. Though The Lineup was eventually canceled, she is currently one of the co-hosts of the series The Five and Outnumbered. She also regularly appears on The O'Reilly Factor's recurring segment "Is it Legal?", Hannity, Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld, and as a weekly Thursday guest on Brian Kilmeade's Kilmeade and Friends radio show. In 2001, she married Gavin Newsom, then a city supervisor, who was elected mayor of San Francisco in 2003. While married to Newsom, she went by the name Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom. In January 2005, citing the strain of a bi-coastal marriage, Guilfoyle filed for divorce from Newsom. Their divorce was finalized on February 28, 2006. On May 27, 2006, Guilfoyle married furniture heir Eric Villency on the island of Barbados. On October 4, 2006, she gave birth to her first child, a boy named Ronan Anthony. Guilfoyle and Villency announced their separation in June 2009 and eventually divorced. Guilfoyle is Roman Catholic.