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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Kentucky / Joined 2023 / Active

Kelly Thompson

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Kelly Thompson is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, serving since 2023. He previously served on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2023 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Kentucky Court of Appeals	–	–
2023	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Education

Western Kentucky University

Judicial Record

In our data, Thompson authored 165 published opinions for the court (2007–2026), plus 7 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Helms v. Commonwealth (57 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. 149 of these were attributed to Thompson 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
2015	Helms v. Commonwealth†	475 S.W.3d 637	57
2007	Suter v. Mazyck	226 S.W.3d 837	56
2011	Age v. Age· Concurrence†	340 S.W.3d 88	55
2008	Hisle v. Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government	258 S.W.3d 422	54
2007	Bissell v. Baumgardner	236 S.W.3d 24	38
2007	Quadrille Business System v. Kentucky Cattlemen's Ass'n†	242 S.W.3d 359	34
2015	Holt v. Holt· Concurrence†	458 S.W.3d 806	31
2014	Halle v. Banner Industries of N.E., Inc.†	453 S.W.3d 179	30
2007	Wallace v. Wallace†	224 S.W.3d 587	28
2008	Rankin v. Criswell†	277 S.W.3d 621	25
2018	Howard v. Spradlin†	562 S.W.3d 281	24
2015	Mo-Jack Distributor, LLC v. Tamarak Snacks, LLC†	476 S.W.3d 900	21
2011	Dennis v. Fulkerson· Concurrence†	343 S.W.3d 633	21
2008	Lucas v. Commonwealth†	258 S.W.3d 806	21
2012	Padilla v. Commonwealth†	381 S.W.3d 322	18

Showing the 15 most-cited of 178 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 Kentucky reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Kelly Thompson on?: Kelly Thompson is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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