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 1965 / Served to 1972

Thomas C. Gordon

Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

Thomas C. Gordon was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1915–2003
Tenure: 1965–1972 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Gordon authored 136 published opinions for the court (1965–1972), plus 10 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Ritter v. Commonwealth (142 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. 98 of these were attributed to Gordon 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
1970	Ritter v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	210 Va. 732	142
1971	Smith v. Kauffman†	183 S.E.2d 190	123
1967	Elder v. Holland	208 Va. 15	83
1969	Burroughs v. Walmont, Inc.	210 Va. 98	62
1971	Surratt, Adm'r v. Thompson	212 Va. 191	57
1970	Manley v. Commonwealth	211 Va. 146	57
1965	State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance v. Smith†	206 Va. 280	55
1967	Butler v. Frieden	208 Va. 352	42
1968	Ashby v. Commonwealth	208 Va. 443	41
1967	Cradle v. Peyton†	156 S.E.2d 874	41
1966	Bosher v. Jamerson†	207 Va. 539	41
1968	Carter v. Commonwealth†	209 Va. 317	39
1966	State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance v. Douglas· Dissent†	207 Va. 265	35
1969	Sullivan v. Commonwealth†	210 Va. 201	32
1965	Hawley v. Commonwealth†	206 Va. 479	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 150 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 Thomas C. Gordon on?: Thomas C. Gordon was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia.

Sources

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

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7 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).