How do judges of the California Court of Appeal reach the bench?

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

California Court of Appeal / Joined 2010 / Active

William J. Murray Jr.

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

William J. Murray Jr. is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2010. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of San Joaquin. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1957 · age 69
Tenure: Since 2010 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Superior Court of California, County of San Joaquin	–	–
2010	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Frostburg State University	magna cum laude	1979
George Washington University		1982

Judicial Record

In our data, Murray authored 50 published opinions for the court (2011–2019), plus 1 dissent and 2 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Holford (156 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. 53 of these were attributed to Murray 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
2012	People v. Holford†	203 Cal. App. 4th 155	156
2013	People v. Hendrix†	214 Cal. App. 4th 216	147
2016	People v. Fruits†	247 Cal. App. 4th 188	79
2011	People v. Clark†	201 Cal. App. 4th 235	65
2012	People v. Mathson†	210 Cal. App. 4th 1297	63
2011	Herrera v. Deutsche Bank National Trust Co.†	196 Cal. App. 4th 1366	60
2017	Sheley v. Harrop†	9 Cal. App. 5th 1147	58
2015	Jimenez v. 24 Hour Fitness USA, Inc.†	237 Cal. App. 4th 546	43
2014	People v. Carroll†	222 Cal. App. 4th 1406	39
2011	Friends of Shingle Springs Interchange, Inc. v. County of El Dorado†	200 Cal. App. 4th 1470	36
2013	Butte County Department of Employment & Social Services v. G.C.†	216 Cal. App. 4th 1391	35
2016	People v. Rogers†	245 Cal. App. 4th 1353	34
2016	Gee v. Greyhound Lines, Inc.†	6 Cal. App. 5th 477	33
2014	People v. Elder†	227 Cal. App. 4th 411	32
2019	People v. Montalvo†	248 Cal. Rptr. 3d 708	30

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 California Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is William J. Murray Jr. on?: William J. Murray Jr. is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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