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

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Supreme Court of Virginia / Joined 1983 / Served to 1989

John Charles Thomas

Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

John Charles Thomas was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: 1983–1989 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

University of Virginia-Main Campus
University of Virginia-Main Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Thomas authored 139 published opinions for the court (1983–1989), plus 10 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Wilson v. Holyfield (257 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. 79 of these were attributed to Thomas 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
1984	Wilson v. Holyfield†	313 S.E.2d 396	257
1984	Messina v. Burden†	321 S.E.2d 657	250
1983	Turner v. Commonwealth†	309 S.E.2d 337	180
1989	Buchanan v. Commonwealth	384 S.E.2d 757	139
1989	Simmons v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	380 S.E.2d 656	124
1983	Keel v. Keel†	303 S.E.2d 917	123
1984	Jones v. Conwell†	314 S.E.2d 61	113
1989	Copenhaver v. Rogers	384 S.E.2d 593	109
1985	Poyner v. Commonwealth†	329 S.E.2d 815	106
1984	Cupp v. Board of Supervisors†	227 Va. 580	103
1986	Robinson v. Commonwealth	341 S.E.2d 159	92
1983	Cook v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	309 S.E.2d 325	86
1989	Ruth v. Fletcher	377 S.E.2d 412	85
1984	Burns v. Board of Sup'rs of Stafford County	315 S.E.2d 856	84
1988	Bennett v. Commonwealth	374 S.E.2d 303	79

Showing the 15 most-cited of 155 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 Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was John Charles Thomas on?: John Charles Thomas was a Justice of the Supreme Court 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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6 years on the Supreme Court of Virginia. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).