How do judges of the Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?

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

Florida District Courts of Appeal / Joined 1965 / Served to 1990

James H. Walden

Judge, Florida District Courts of Appeal

James H. Walden was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1965–1990 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Florida District Courts of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Florida

Judicial Record

In our data, Walden authored 552 published opinions for the court (1959–1992), plus 134 dissents and 31 concurrences. Most cited: Polyglycoat Corp. v. Hirsch Distrib., Inc. (113 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. 419 of these were attributed to Walden 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
1983	Polyglycoat Corp. v. Hirsch Distrib., Inc.	442 So. 2d 958	113
1976	State v. Hayes	333 So. 2d 51	83
1972	Gable v. Silver	258 So. 2d 11	69
1973	Uniweld Products, Inc. v. INDUSTRIAL REL. COM'N, ETC.	277 So. 2d 827	66
1984	Ryan v. State	457 So. 2d 1084	55
1966	Biddle v. State Beverage Department	187 So. 2d 65	52
1987	Cumberland Software, Inc. v. GREAT AM. MORTG.	507 So. 2d 794	50
1970	Williams v. Florida Real Estate Commission· Dissent†	232 So. 2d 239	40
1987	Russell v. Russell	507 So. 2d 661	35
1969	Butler v. State	228 So. 2d 421	34
1966	Mendez v. George Hunt, Inc.	191 So. 2d 480	34
1984	Van Tuyn v. Zurich American Ins. Co.	447 So. 2d 318	33
1975	Dublin Company v. Peninsular Supply Company	309 So. 2d 207	32
1969	Keith Investments, Inc. v. James	220 So. 2d 695	32
1972	Worley v. State	263 So. 2d 613	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 718 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 Florida District Courts of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was James H. Walden on?: James H. Walden was a Judge of the Florida District Courts of Appeal.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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25 years on the Florida District Courts of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).