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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Alabama / Joined 2013 / Active

Tommy E. Bryan

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Tommy E. Bryan is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama (9 judges, selected by partisan election), serving since 2013. He previously served on the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2013 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	Alabama Court of Civil Appeals	–	–
2013	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Bryan authored 512 published opinions for the court (2005–2018), plus 59 dissents and 132 concurrences. Most cited: Ex Parte Russell (53 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. 498 of these were attributed to Bryan 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
2005	Ex Parte Russell	911 So. 2d 719	53
2013	Sturdivant v. BAC Home Loans Servicing· Concurrence†	159 So. 3d 31	46
2010	Shewbart v. Shewbart· Concurrence†	64 So. 3d 1080	43
2008	J.B. v. Cleburne County Dhr· Dissent†	992 So. 2d 34	43
2014	Sterne, Agee & Leach, Inc. v. U.S. Bank National Ass'n· Concurrence†	148 So. 3d 1060	41
2009	Lackey v. Lackey· Concurrence†	18 So. 3d 393	36
2011	J.W. S.W. v. C.B.†	68 So. 3d 878	35
2010	Sexton v. Sexton	42 So. 3d 1280	33
2008	J.B. v. DeKalb County Department of Human Resources· Dissent†	12 So. 3d 100	33
2005	Sumlin v. Sumlin· Concurrence†	931 So. 2d 40	33
2016	Alabama State University v. Danley†	212 So. 3d 112	31
2007	A.J.H.T. v. K.O.H.· Concurrence†	983 So. 2d 394	30
2005	W.T.H. v. M.M.M.· Concurrence†	915 So. 2d 64	29
2014	Eric Anderton and Jackson Key Practice Solutions, LLC v. The Practice-Monroeville, P.C.†	164 So. 3d 1094	28
2008	A.D.B.H. v. Houston County Department of Human Resources· Concurrence†	1 So. 3d 53	26

Showing the 15 most-cited of 707 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 Alabama reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is Tommy E. Bryan on?: Tommy E. Bryan is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Sources

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

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