How do judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia / Joined 1937 / Served to 1958

James B. Riley

Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

James B. Riley was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, who joined the court in 1937. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1894–1958
Tenure: 1937–1958 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1937	Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia	–	–

Education

Georgetown University
Columbia University in the City of New York

Judicial Record

In our data, Riley authored 420 published opinions for the court (1937–1958), plus 27 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Sands v. Security Trust Company (185 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. 57 of these were attributed to Riley 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
1958	Sands v. Security Trust Company	102 S.E.2d 733	185
1953	Vest v. Cobb	76 S.E.2d 885	119
1938	Newhart v. Pennybacker	200 S.E. 350	89
1939	Chapman v. Huntington, West Virginia, Housing Authority	3 S.E.2d 502	83
1940	Fielder v. Service Cab Co.	11 S.E.2d 115	75
1955	State v. Bragg†	140 W. Va. 585	74
1953	State ex rel. Trent v. Sims†	138 W. Va. 244	71
1937	Meyn v. Dulaney-Miller Auto Co.	191 S.E. 558	62
1950	Webb v. Sessler	63 S.E.2d 65	56
1949	State Ex Rel. Morris v. West Virginia Racing Commission· Dissent	55 S.E.2d 263	51
1937	Spradling v. Spradling	190 S.E. 537	51
1949	State v. Simon· Dissent	52 S.E.2d 725	48
1947	Skaff v. Dodd	44 S.E.2d 621	48
1956	State v. Cirullo· Dissent†	142 W. Va. 56	47
1945	State v. Foley	35 S.E.2d 854	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 458 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 Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was James B. Riley on?: James B. Riley was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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21 years on the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).