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We study the nucleon's partonic angular momentum (AM) content at peripheral transverse distances b=O(Mπ−1), where the structure is governed by chiral dynamics. We compute the nucleon form factors of the energy-momentum tensor in chiral effective field theory (ChEFT) and construct the transverse densities of AM at fixed light-front time. In the periphery the spin density is suppressed, and the AM is predominantly orbital. In the first-quantized representation of ChEFT in light-front form, the field-theoretical AM density coincides with the quantum-mechanical orbital AM density of the soft pions in the nucleon's periphery. Keywords: Nucleon spin decomposition, Generalized parton distributions, Energy-momentum tensor, Orbital angular momentum, Chiral effective field theory, Light-front quantization