How do judges of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania / Joined 1985 / Active

John T.J. Kelly

Judge, Superior Court of Pennsylvania

John T.J. Kelly is a Judge of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, serving since 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1985 · 41 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	Superior Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Creighton University

Judicial Record

In our data, Kelly authored 620 published opinions for the court (1986–2010), plus 19 dissents and 23 concurrences. Most cited: In the Interest of A.L.D. (816 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. 255 of these were attributed to Kelly 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
2002	In the Interest of A.L.D.†	797 A.2d 326	816
2001	Commonwealth v. Carr	768 A.2d 1164	670
2003	Commonwealth v. Lyons†	833 A.2d 245	520
1994	Terletsky v. Prudential Property & Casualty Insurance	649 A.2d 680	494
2009	In re K.T.E.L.†	983 A.2d 745	326
2003	Commonwealth v. Anderson†	830 A.2d 1013	305
2003	Commonwealth v. Karanicolas†	836 A.2d 940	257
2007	Commonwealth v. Derrickson	923 A.2d 466	247
2003	Pittsburgh Construction Co. v. Griffith†	834 A.2d 572	174
2003	Commonwealth v. Dent†	837 A.2d 571	149
1988	Eckenrod v. GAF Corp.	544 A.2d 50	145
2001	Commonwealth v. Touw	781 A.2d 1250	143
2002	Estate of Haiko v. McGinley	799 A.2d 155	140
1998	Commonwealth v. Johnson· Concurrence†	719 A.2d 778	140
1995	Commonwealth v. Braykovich	664 A.2d 133	132

Showing the 15 most-cited of 662 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 Superior Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is John T.J. Kelly on?: John T.J. Kelly is a Judge of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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