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 2010 / Active

William C. Mims

Senior Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

William C. Mims is a Senior Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, serving since 2010. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1957 · age 69
Tenure: Since 2010 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2010	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

College of William and Mary
George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Mims authored 27 published opinions for the court (2010–2017), plus 4 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: McGhee v. Com. (172 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. 5 of these were attributed to Mims 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
2010	McGhee v. Com.	701 S.E.2d 58	172
2010	STATION 2, LLC v. Lynch	695 S.E.2d 537	62
2012	Mathews v. PHH Mortg. Corp.	724 S.E.2d 196	61
2011	Brooks v. Com.	712 S.E.2d 464	55
2010	Conger v. Barrett	702 S.E.2d 117	46
2010	Covel v. Town of Vienna	694 S.E.2d 609	38
2010	UNIWEST CONST. v. Amtech Elevator Services	699 S.E.2d 223	37
2016	Howell v. McAuliffe· Dissent†	788 S.E.2d 706	33
2011	Volpe v. City of Lexington	708 S.E.2d 824	33
2011	Addison v. Jurgelsky	704 S.E.2d 402	32
2011	Lee v. City of Norfolk	706 S.E.2d 330	31
2012	Belew v. Com.	726 S.E.2d 257	27
2011	Mulford v. Walnut Hill Farm Group, LLC	712 S.E.2d 468	25
2017	Palmer v. R. A. Yancey Lumber Corp.· Concurrence†	803 S.E.2d 742	23
2011	HOME PARAMOUNT PEST CONTROL v. Shaffer	718 S.E.2d 762	22

Showing the 15 most-cited of 32 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 is William C. Mims on?: William C. Mims is a Senior Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia.

Sources

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

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16 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).