How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?

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

Court of Appeals of Arizona / Joined 2009 / Active

Virginia C. Kelly

Judge, Court of Appeals of Arizona

Virginia C. Kelly is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona, serving since 2009. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2009 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2009	Court of Appeals of Arizona	–	–

Education

University of Arizona

Judicial Record

In our data, Kelly authored 51 published opinions for the court (2010–2017), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: Bennigno R. v. Arizona Department of Economic Security (92 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. 34 of these were attributed to Kelly 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
2013	Bennigno R. v. Arizona Department of Economic Security†	233 Ariz. 345	92
2014	State of Arizona v. Ronnie Roy Vera†	235 Ariz. 571	51
2010	Potter v. Vanderpool	240 P.3d 1257	40
2012	Xavier R. and Athena R. v. Ades and Joseph R.†	230 Ariz. 96	39
2011	In Re Marriage of Gibbs	258 P.3d 221	39
2013	State of Arizona v. Raul Herrera III†	232 Ariz. 536	38
2013	State of Arizona v. Ramon Escareno Meraz†	232 Ariz. 586	35
2013	Tumacacori Mission Land Development, Ltd. v. Union Pacific Railroad Company†	231 Ariz. 517	33
2013	State of Arizona v. Manuel Alejandro Delgado†	232 Ariz. 182	29
2011	Villa De Jardines Ass'n v. Flagstar Bank, FSB	253 P.3d 288	29
2010	State v. Rodriguez	251 P.3d 1045	29
2010	State v. Eddington· Concurrence†	244 P.3d 76	21
2014	State of Arizona v. Javier Solis†	236 Ariz. 242	19
2013	State of Arizona v. Pierre Banda†	232 Ariz. 582	19
2012	State of Arizona v. Kwame Roy Lowery†	230 Ariz. 536	18

Showing the 15 most-cited of 53 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 Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Virginia C. Kelly on?: Virginia C. Kelly is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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