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

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Court of Appeals of Virginia / Joined 2006 / Served to 2014

William G. Petty

Judge, Court of Appeals of Virginia

William G. Petty was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia, who joined the court in 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2006–2014 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Court of Appeals of Virginia	–	–

Education

College of William and Mary
College of William and Mary

Judicial Record

In our data, Petty authored 56 published opinions for the court (2006–2014), plus 6 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Dickerson v. Commonwealth (220 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. 30 of these were attributed to Petty 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
2011	Dickerson v. Commonwealth	709 S.E.2d 717	220
2011	Scott v. Commonwealth	707 S.E.2d 17	174
2009	Brittle v. Commonwealth	680 S.E.2d 335	161
2008	Jones v. Commonwealth	660 S.E.2d 343	153
2007	Robinson v. Robinson	648 S.E.2d 314	117
2014	Patricia E. Smith, Guardian ad litem for the minor child v. Maggie S. Welch†	64 Va. App. 34	108
2009	Kilby v. Culpeper County Department of Social Services	684 S.E.2d 219	75
2008	City of Waynesboro v. Griffin	657 S.E.2d 782	58
2007	Bowling v. Commonwealth	654 S.E.2d 354	57
2012	CERES MARINE TERMINALS v. Armstrong	722 S.E.2d 301	53
2012	Sierra v. Commonwealth	722 S.E.2d 656	49
2007	King v. Commonwealth	644 S.E.2d 391	46
2013	Steve Whitt v. Commonwealth of Virginia· Concurrence†	61 Va. App. 637	43
2008	Wright v. Commonwealth	667 S.E.2d 787	43
2012	Mayfield v. Commonwealth	722 S.E.2d 689	37

Showing the 15 most-cited of 71 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 Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was William G. Petty on?: William G. Petty was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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