Skip to main content
Blog Government & Politics Justice

Judicial Screening Commission Recommends Four for Appeals Court Vacancy

Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) will have three judges and one attorney to consider for a looming vacancy on the state’s highest court.

The Maryland Appellate Courts Judicial Nominating Commission on Friday posted a list of four nominees for Hogan to choose from to fill a vacancy created by the pending retirement of Court of Appeals Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbera, who is due to step down next month. Barbera represents a Montgomery County seat on the seven-judge panel, so the nominating commission’s four recommended candidates all hail from the state’s largest jurisdiction.

The list includes three judges — two of whom were appointed to their current positions by Hogan: Court of Special Appeals Judge Steven B. Gould, Court of Special Appeals Judge Terrence M. R. Zic, and Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Sharon V. Burrell.

Also recommended: Attorney J. Bradford McCullough, a principal with the Bethesda law firm Lerch, Early and Brewer. In all, six candidates applied for the vacancy.

Gould has served on the Court of Special Appeals, Maryland’s second highest court, since April 2019. He was a founding partner in the Bethesda firm of Brown Gould and Kiely LLP (now Brown and Kiely), which has a business and personal injury practice.

Zic has served on the Court of Special Appeals since last November. He has been a partner or principal at three separate law firms during his career, and when he finished law school he served as a clerk to then-Chief Appeals Court Judge Robert C. Murphy in 1989 and 1990.

Burrell has served on the Montgomery County Circuit Court since 2008, an appointee of former Gov. Martin J. O’Malley (D). She also served as a clerk to a Maryland Court of Appeals judge, the late Harry A. Cole, early in her career.

McCullough is a commercial and business litigator and appellate attorney who has been with Lerch, Early, and Brewer since 1997. He clerked for a Special Court of Appeals judge, Theodore G. Bloom, early in his career.

Barbera has been the state’s chief judge since 2013 and a member of the Appeals Court since 2008. The mandatory retirement age for appellate judges in Maryland is 70.

Whenever Barbera’s replacement is seated on the bench, it will make five of the seven judges on the state’s highest court Hogan appointees. Hogan has not yet said who he will nominate to fill the role of chief judge.

[email protected]

REPUBLISHING TERMS

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected].

To republish, copy the following text and paste it into your HTML editor.

License

Creative Commons License AttributionCreative Commons Attribution
Judicial Screening Commission Recommends Four for Appeals Court Vacancy