How do judges of the Appellate Court of Maryland reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Appellate Court of Maryland / Joined 1974 / Served to 1981

Ridgely P. Melvin Jr.

Judge, Appellate Court of Maryland

Ridgely P. Melvin Jr. was a Judge of the Appellate Court of Maryland, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1974–1981 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	Appellate Court of Maryland	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Melvin authored 174 published opinions for the court (1967–1981), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Barnes v. State (72 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. 75 of these were attributed to Melvin 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
1976	Barnes v. State	354 A.2d 499	72
1975	State v. DeLawder	344 A.2d 446	45
1978	Bank of Southern Maryland v. Robertson's Crab House, Inc.†	389 A.2d 388	36
1975	Brown v. State	349 A.2d 359	30
1976	Von Lusch v. State†	356 A.2d 277	29
1977	Bell v. Bell	379 A.2d 419	28
1981	Robinson v. State†	425 A.2d 211	27
1981	Lemons v. State†	433 A.2d 1179	24
1979	Cole v. Cole†	409 A.2d 734	22
1978	Delia v. Berkey· Concurrence†	395 A.2d 1189	22
1977	Gray v. State	380 A.2d 1071	22
1977	C. S. Bowen Co. v. Maryland National Bank	373 A.2d 30	22
1975	Kimbrough v. Giant Food, Inc.	339 A.2d 688	22
1979	Kelch v. Mass Transit Administration	400 A.2d 440	21
1977	Tobias v. State	378 A.2d 698	21

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 Appellate Court of Maryland reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Ridgely P. Melvin Jr. on?: Ridgely P. Melvin Jr. was a Judge of the Appellate Court of Maryland.

Sources

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

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