It's a Real Choice for the GOP Nomination for Presiding Judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals

 

Justice David L. Bridges of Dallas's Fifth State Court of Appeals is running to be Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court.  He got his high school diploma from Rains High School, served two years in the Army, worked his way through college assembling air conditioners for General Electric, and after that, worked as a landman. He graduated law school at Texas Tech, was allowed to practice his third year of law school.helping indigent families and migrant workers with family law issues. He worked for the Palo Duro Legal Aid through the Presbyterian Church in West Texas, then the Smith County District Attorney's Office first trying misdemeanors, then felonies. After two years, he went to work in Upshur County for the District Attorney and was First Assistant. He became a senior trial attorney for the State Bar of Texas. In 1990, he was named Regional Counsel for the State Bar and was responsible for Dallas County and forty-four other counties. I went back to Austin and was named First Assistant and Chief of Litigation and handled all the attorney discipline cases in Texas. After a short time of being in private practice, he has spent the last 22 years as a Justice on Dallas's Fifth Court of Appeals.  He is running against incumbent Presiding Judge Sharon Keller and urges voters to Google Sharon Keller ethics.

Three Republicans Line up to Challenge Jim Sharp for his Seat in Houston's First Court of Appeals

We've blogged before about Houston First Court of Appeals Justice Jim Sharp's problem with the Judicial Conduct Commission.

 He's a Democrat. He was a solo general practitioner. He's not a particularly bad guy, as Democrats go, and as handsome as a movie actor. The GOP apparently smells blood in the water since three people are competing for the chance to challenge him in the general election:

• Chad Bridges is head of the Family Violence Division of the Fort Bend County District Attorney's Office. Before that he was First Assistant to the Waller County D.A., and before that, he worked in the Post-Conviction Writ Section of the Appellate Division of the Harris County District Attorney's Office. He was honored by the Crime Victims Response Team of Fort Bend County. He and his wife Claudia are active in the Pecan Grove Gators of the Fort Bend Youth Football League. He was formerly a peace officer and serves on a State Bar Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee. His web site lists important appellate matters he has handled and trials that he has done, which we always like. Apparently a Brookshire resident, he also has the finest looking crew cut I've seen since the '60's.
  
• Dan Linebaugh, a Baytown small firm lawyer, board certified in personal injury law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and in civil trial law by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. He won awards in moot court and mock trial with his work in the excellent South Texas College of Law advocacy program. There's a lot missing here because I could find hardly any campaign information about him conveniently.
  
• Russell Lloyd was a civil district judge in Harris County in the late '80s and in the '90s, before he got washed out in the Great Blue Wave back then. I don't remember him as an especially good or bad judge back at that time, though then, a little more than now, civil plaintiffs' lawyers were generally treated by the civil bench as loathsome. An Eagle Scout, he was an Air Force veteran, then was an Airborne Ranger in the Army National Guard, and then later a member of the Judge Advocate General's Corps there. As a law student he was executive editor of the American Journal of Criminal Law. He was an Assistant Scoutmaster. He is a life member of the National Rifle Association and has volunteered with the Houston Humane Society. He has been a super-Republican for many, many years- to give you samples of everything that he has done would swamp this part of the post. He's an amateur musician and member of the big Episcopal church in River Oaks. After he was turned off the bench, he has been working on plaintiffs' side with John O'Quinn and had such an unhappy client that he was sued for legal malpractice, but the case was dismissed. He's been married 30 years to attorney Mary Lloyd, and the two of them have two kids, each of whom are lawyers. I think that he has done great service to the Republican Party, that he was not hateful from the trial bench as so many of his colleagues were, that he is highly intelligent and diligent, though maybe more as a politician than a jurist. He's done a very great deal over the decades. Out of all the great multitudes of things that he has done, only one has been seriously questioned and that complaint was eventually dismissed. Seventeen years ago the Texas Supreme Court chose him out of all the state district court judges in the state to try a lawyer discipline case; that's not a job a chump gets.
  

Justice Sharp is good-looking. Judge Lloyd looks wonderful in his (old)  photo, but we still have to give the palm for great hair to Chad Bridges.