She graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1991. She then attended the University of Virginia School of Law, where she was a notes editor for the Virginia Law Review. She graduated from Glastonbury High School in 1981. Her maternal grandparents were Polish immigrants and her father was of Irish and English ancestry.

Ingraham grew up in Glastonbury, Connecticut, where she was born to Anne Caroline (née Kozak) and James Frederick Ingraham III.