Newsom nominates 4 appellate justices, appoints 11 trial judges

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday announced a slate of judicial appointments and nominations across California, including four Court of Appeal picks and 11 new Superior Court judges spanning seven counties.

At the appellate level, Newsom nominated sitting 2nd District Court of Appeal Justice Tari Cody to serve as presiding justice of Division 6, where she has been an associate justice since 2023. He also nominated Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Daum to Division 4 of the 2nd District, Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Sonny S. Sandhu to the 5th District Court of Appeal, and Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Charles Adams to the 6th District Court of Appeal. All four nominations are subject to confirmation by the Commission on Judicial Appointments.

Cody served as a Ventura County Superior Court judge from 2000 to 2023 and earlier practiced at Lemieux & O'Neill and Nordman, Cormany, Hair & Compton. She would fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Arthur Gilbert.

Daum, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge since 2022, previously was a partner at Kendall Brill & Kelly and an associate at Susman Godfrey. He would succeed Justice Audrey B. Collins.

Sandhu has served on the Stanislaus County Superior Court since 2018 and is currently its presiding judge. He spent more than a decade at the county Public Defender's Office, rising to public defender from 2017 to 2018. He would fill the vacancy to be created by the planned June 29 retirement of Justice Rosendo Peña Jr.

Adams, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge since 2018, earlier served as an administrative law clerk at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and as a staff attorney at the Santa Clara County Superior Court. He would succeed Justice Patricia Bamattre-Manoukian.

Newsom also appointed 11 judges to trial courts across the state.

In Los Angeles County, the governor named four: David Perkiss, a supervising research attorney at the Superior Court since 2019; Mahin Salehi, a court commissioner since 2024 and former deputy alternate public defender; Adam Romero, chief deputy director of the state Department of Industrial Relations; and Jennifer Salzman Romano, a partner at Crowell & Moring.

In Contra Costa County, Newsom appointed Matthew Caron, a deputy district attorney since 2010, and Jennifer Logue, the Mountain View city attorney.

The remaining appointments each went to a single county: Elizabeth Leitzinger, a shareholder at Fenton & Keller, in Monterey County; Veronica Juarez, a deputy district attorney, in Napa County; Lara Hoffman, a senior staff attorney and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School, in Santa Clara County; Sarah Carrillo, assistant general counsel at the California State Association of Counties and former Tuolumne County counsel, in Tuolumne County; and Jacquelyn Ruffin, a partner at Myers Widders Gibson Jones & Feingold, in Ventura County.