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

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Court of Appeals of Virginia / Joined 1992 / Served to 2006

Johanna L. Fitzpatrick

Judge, Court of Appeals of Virginia

Johanna L. Fitzpatrick was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia, who joined the court in 1992. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1992–2006 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1992	Court of Appeals of Virginia	–	–

Education

Tufts University

Judicial Record

In our data, Fitzpatrick authored 242 published opinions for the court (1992–2008), plus 15 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: O'Loughlin v. O'Loughlin (592 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. 73 of these were attributed to Fitzpatrick 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
1996	O'Loughlin v. O'Loughlin	479 S.E.2d 98	592
1997	Moreno v. Moreno	480 S.E.2d 792	175
1992	Alphin v. Alphin	424 S.E.2d 572	154
1994	Gottlieb v. Gottlieb	448 S.E.2d 666	125
2006	Michels v. Commonwealth	624 S.E.2d 675	124
1995	Sargent v. Sargent	460 S.E.2d 596	124
2002	Northcutt v. Northcutt	571 S.E.2d 912	116
2005	Kyer v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	612 S.E.2d 213	113
1994	Woolfolk v. Commonwealth	447 S.E.2d 530	110
1999	Haskins v. Commonwealth	521 S.E.2d 777	96
2003	Gaines v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	574 S.E.2d 775	95
1993	Southern Iron Works, Inc. v. Wallace	428 S.E.2d 32	76
1994	James v. Commonwealth	446 S.E.2d 900	73
1994	Tatum v. Commonwealth	440 S.E.2d 133	73
1998	Allen & Rocks, Inc. v. Briggs	508 S.E.2d 335	72

Showing the 15 most-cited of 261 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 Court of Appeals of Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was Johanna L. Fitzpatrick on?: Johanna L. Fitzpatrick was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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