How do judges of the Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee / Joined 2006 / Active

Kelly D. Thomas Jr.

Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee

Kelly D. Thomas Jr. is a Judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee, serving since 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2006 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Thomas authored 980 published opinions for the court (2007–2025). Most cited: State v. Rockwell (147 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. 2 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
2007	State v. Rockwell†	280 S.W.3d 212	147
2013	State of Tennessee v. Raynella Dossett Leath	461 S.W.3d 73	95
2007	State of Tennessee v. Marcus Dwayne Welcome	280 S.W.3d 215	62
2012	State of Tennessee v. Robert Fusco	404 S.W.3d 504	44
2016	State of Tennessee v. Michael Lebron Branham	501 S.W.3d 577	36
2015	State of Tennessee v. Benjamin Foust	482 S.W.3d 20	33
2009	State v. Bowman	327 S.W.3d 69	32
2011	State of Tennessee v. Allen Doane	393 S.W.3d 721	23
2014	State of Tennessee v. Kenneth Paul Colvett	481 S.W.3d 172	17
2013	State of Tennessee v. Cynthia J. Finch	465 S.W.3d 584	16
2012	State of Tennessee v. Joseph Nathaniel Nance	393 S.W.3d 212	15
2015	State of Tennessee v. Donald Biggs, Alias	482 S.W.3d 923	14
2011	State v. Montgomery	350 S.W.3d 573	9
2013	State of Tennessee v. George Andrew Stanhope	476 S.W.3d 382	8
2016	State of Tennessee v. Felicia Jones†	512 S.W.3d 258	7

Showing the 15 most-cited of 980 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 Criminal Appeals of Tennessee reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court is Kelly D. Thomas Jr. on?: Kelly D. Thomas Jr. is a Judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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