diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/tuning/CrossValidator.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/tuning/CrossValidator.scala
index 6ea52ef7f025..0e48e5b8ee6e 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/tuning/CrossValidator.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/tuning/CrossValidator.scala
@@ -91,6 +91,11 @@ class CrossValidator @Since("1.2.0") (@Since("1.4.0") override val uid: String)
   @Since("2.0.0")
   def setSeed(value: Long): this.type = set(seed, value)
 
+  /** @group setParam */
+  @Since("2.1.0")
+  def setGroupCol(value: String): this.type = set(groupKFoldCol, value)
+  setDefault(groupKFoldCol -> "")
+
   @Since("2.0.0")
   override def fit(dataset: Dataset[_]): CrossValidatorModel = {
     val schema = dataset.schema
@@ -101,7 +106,16 @@ class CrossValidator @Since("1.2.0") (@Since("1.4.0") override val uid: String)
     val epm = $(estimatorParamMaps)
     val numModels = epm.length
     val metrics = new Array[Double](epm.length)
-    val splits = MLUtils.kFold(dataset.toDF.rdd, $(numFolds), $(seed))
+
+    val splits = if ($(groupKFoldCol).nonEmpty) {
+      val groupKFoldColIdx = schema.fieldNames.indexOf($(groupKFoldCol))
+      val pairValue = dataset.toDF.rdd.map(row => (row(groupKFoldColIdx), row))
+      val labeledSplits = MLUtils.groupKFold(pairValue, $(numFolds))
+      labeledSplits.map { case (training, validation) => (training.values, validation.values) }
+    } else {
+      MLUtils.kFold(dataset.toDF.rdd, $(numFolds), $(seed))
+    }
+
     splits.zipWithIndex.foreach { case ((training, validation), splitIndex) =>
       val trainingDataset = sparkSession.createDataFrame(training, schema).cache()
       val validationDataset = sparkSession.createDataFrame(validation, schema).cache()
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/tuning/ValidatorParams.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/tuning/ValidatorParams.scala
index 26fd73814d70..9f759f2bf06d 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/tuning/ValidatorParams.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/tuning/ValidatorParams.scala
@@ -56,6 +56,17 @@ private[ml] trait ValidatorParams extends HasSeed with Params {
   /** @group getParam */
   def getEstimatorParamMaps: Array[ParamMap] = $(estimatorParamMaps)
 
+  /**
+    * param for groupKFold column name
+    * default: empty
+    * @group param
+    */
+  val groupKFoldCol: Param[String] = new Param[String](this, "groupKFoldCol",
+    "groupKFold column name")
+
+  /** @group getParam */
+  def getGroupCol: String = $(groupKFoldCol)
+
   /**
    * param for the evaluator used to select hyper-parameters that maximize the validated metric
    *
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/util/MLUtils.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/util/MLUtils.scala
index e96c2bc6edfc..bd178d438109 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/util/MLUtils.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/util/MLUtils.scala
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 package org.apache.spark.mllib.util
 
 import scala.annotation.varargs
+import scala.collection.mutable.ArrayBuffer
 import scala.reflect.ClassTag
 
 import org.apache.spark.SparkContext
@@ -227,6 +228,30 @@ object MLUtils extends Logging {
     }.toArray
   }
 
+  /**
+   * Version of [[groupKFold()]] taking a PairRDD with group labels as keys.
+   */
+  def groupKFold[K: ClassTag, V: ClassTag](rdd: RDD[(K, V)], numFolds: Int):
+      Array[(RDD[(K, V)], RDD[(K, V)])] = {
+    val groupArray = rdd.mapValues(_ => 1L)
+      .reduceByKey(_ + _)
+      .sortBy(_._2, ascending = false)
+      .collect()
+    require(groupArray.length >= numFolds, s"there cannot be more folds than groups.")
+    val samplePerFold = new Array[Long](numFolds)
+    val group2fold = Array.fill(numFolds)(new ArrayBuffer[K])
+    for ((k, v) <- groupArray) {
+      val index = samplePerFold.zipWithIndex.min._2
+      samplePerFold(index) += v
+      group2fold(index) += k
+    }
+    (0 until numFolds).map { fold =>
+      val validation = rdd.filter(sample => group2fold(fold).contains(sample._1))
+      val training = rdd.filter(sample => !group2fold(fold).contains(sample._1))
+      (training, validation)
+    }.toArray
+  }
+
   /**
    * Returns a new vector with `1.0` (bias) appended to the input vector.
    */
diff --git a/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/util/MLUtilsSuite.scala b/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/util/MLUtilsSuite.scala
index 6aa93c907600..2f498cbb898f 100644
--- a/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/util/MLUtilsSuite.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/util/MLUtilsSuite.scala
@@ -210,6 +210,45 @@ class MLUtilsSuite extends SparkFunSuite with MLlibTestSparkContext {
     }
   }
 
+  test("groupKFold") {
+    val data = sc.parallelize(
+      Seq((1, 'a'), (1, 'b'), (2, 'c'), (2, 'd'), (2, 'e'), (3, 'f')))
+    val collectedData = data.collect().sorted
+    val twoFoldedRdd = groupKFold(data, 2)
+    assert(twoFoldedRdd(0)._1.collect().sorted.sameElements(twoFoldedRdd(1)._2.collect().sorted))
+    assert(twoFoldedRdd(0)._2.collect().sorted.sameElements(twoFoldedRdd(1)._1.collect().sorted))
+
+    withClue("Invalid setting of numFolds was not caught !") {
+      intercept[IllegalArgumentException] {
+        val testRdd = groupKFold(data, 10)
+      }
+    }
+
+    for (folds <- 2 to 3) {
+        val foldedRdds = groupKFold(data, folds)
+        assert(foldedRdds.length === folds)
+        foldedRdds.foreach { case (training, validation) =>
+          val result = validation.union(training).collect().sorted
+          val validationSize = validation.collect().size.toFloat
+          assert(validationSize > 0, "empty validation data")
+          assert(training.collect().size > 0, "empty training data")
+          assert(result ===  collectedData,
+            "Each training+validation set combined should contain all of the data.")
+          val validationLength = validation.map(_._1).collect().distinct.length
+          val traingingLength = training.map(_._1).collect().distinct.length
+          assert(validationLength + traingingLength === validation.map(_._1)
+            .collect()
+            .distinct
+            .union(training.map(_._1).collect().distinct)
+            .length,
+            "same group should not appear in both training set and validation set")
+        }
+        // group K fold should only have each element in the validation set exactly once
+        assert(foldedRdds.map(_._2).reduce((x, y) => x.union(y)).collect().sorted ===
+          data.collect().sorted)
+    }
+  }
+
   test("loadVectors") {
     val vectors = sc.parallelize(Seq(
       Vectors.dense(1.0, 2.0),