Alexander Karlin was born in 1951 in the village of Medvedka of the Altai Territory's Tyumentsevsky district.
1972 - graduated from the Sverdlovsk Law Institute.
Subsequent to the Law Institute, served as an investigator, senior investigator, city prosecutor's assistant and deputy prosecutor of a city district at the Prosecutor's Office in the Altai Territory's city of Biisk.
1982 - appointed deputy prosecutor of Barnaul, later department chief at the Altai Territory Prosecutor's Office, and after four years was transferred to the Prosecutor General's Office of the USSR to temporarily serve as senior prosecutor of a directorate and assistant Prosecutor General of the USSR.
1992 - department chief at the directorate, chief of the directorate for the support of prosecutors in the arbitration process at the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation.
Later, Alexander Karlin served as State Secretary - First Deputy Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation, and First Deputy Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation.
2004 - appointed head of the civil service directorate at the Executive Office of the Russian President.
August 25, 2005, the Altai Territory's People's Deputies Council authorized Alexander Karlin as the Territory's Governor upon the recommendation of the Russian President.