How do judges of the Appellate Court of Maryland reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Appellate Court of Maryland / Joined 1977 / Served to 1982

James F. Couch Jr.

Judge, Appellate Court of Maryland

James F. Couch Jr. was a Judge of the Appellate Court of Maryland, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1977–1982 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Appellate Court of Maryland	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Couch authored 96 published opinions for the court (1976–1988). Most cited: Snyder v. Herbert Greenbaum & Associates, Inc. (57 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 51 of these were attributed to Couch by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1977	Snyder v. Herbert Greenbaum & Associates, Inc.	380 A.2d 618	57
1979	Levin v. Levin	405 A.2d 770	46
1978	Dixon v. Process Corp.	382 A.2d 893	46
1978	Gregory v. State	391 A.2d 437	38
1988	Harrison v. Bill Cairns Pontiac of Marlow Heights, Inc.	549 A.2d 385	35
1981	Erman v. State†	434 A.2d 1030	31
1979	Colandrea v. Colandrea†	401 A.2d 480	31
1988	P v. Properties, Inc. v. Rock Creek Village Associates Ltd. Partnership	549 A.2d 403	27
1978	Hopkins v. Maryland Inmate Grievance Commission	391 A.2d 1213	27
1978	Poore v. State	384 A.2d 103	26
1981	Johns Hopkins Hospital v. Lehninger†	429 A.2d 538	25
1980	Butler v. State†	416 A.2d 773	24
1979	Stevenson v. State†	403 A.2d 812	22
1979	Leuschner v. State	397 A.2d 622	22
1982	Chai Management, Inc. v. Leibowitz†	439 A.2d 34	20

Showing the 15 most-cited of 96 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Appellate Court of Maryland reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was James F. Couch Jr. on?: James F. Couch Jr. was a Judge of the Appellate Court of Maryland.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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5 years on the Appellate Court of Maryland. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).