D. Arthur Kelsey
2015 - Present
2027
10
D. Arthur Kelsey is a judge of the Supreme Court of Virginia. He assumed office on March 6, 2015. His current term ends on January 31, 2027.
Kelsey was appointed to the court by the Virginia General Assembly on January 20, 2015, and was sworn into office on March 6, 2015.[1][2] To read more about judicial selection in Virginia, click here.
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country. As part of this study, we assigned each justice a Confidence Score describing our confidence in the degree of partisanship exhibited by the justices' past partisan behavior, before they joined the court.[3] Kelsey received a confidence score of Mild Republican.[4] Click here to read more about this study.
Biography
Kelsey received his undergraduate degree from Old Dominion University and his J.D. from the College of William and Mary School of Law.[5] Kelsey began his career as a law clerk to U.S. District Judge John MacKenzie. He then worked as a partner at the law firm of Hunton & Williams. In 2000, Kelsey became a circuit court judge for the 5th Judicial Circuit in Suffolk, where he served until his appointment to the Virginia Court of Appeals by former Governor Mark Warner on August 30, 2002. He served on the Virginia Court of Appeals until joining the Supreme Court of Virginia in January 2015.[6]
Appointments
2015
Kelsey was appointed to the court by the Virginia General Assembly on January 20, 2015, and was sworn into office on March 6, 2015.[1][2]
Analysis
Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship (2020)
Last updated: June 15, 2020
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country as of June 15, 2020.
The study presented Confidence Scores that represented our confidence in each justice's degree of partisan affiliation. This was not a measure of where a justice fell on an ideological spectrum, but rather a measure of how much confidence we had that a justice was or had been affiliated with a political party. The scores were based on seven factors, including but not limited to party registration.[7]
The five resulting categories of Confidence Scores were:
- Strong Democrat
- Mild Democrat
- Indeterminate[8]
- Mild Republican
- Strong Republican
This justice's Confidence Score, as well as the factors contributing to that score, is presented below. The information below was current as of June 2020.
D. Arthur
Kelsey
Virginia
- Partisan Confidence Score:
Mild Republican - Judicial Selection Method:
Direct legislative appointment - Key Factors:
- Donated less than $2,000 to Republican candidates
- Appointed by a Republican legislature
Partisan Profile
Details:
Kelsey was appointed in 2015 by a Republican controlled legislature. He donated $1,500 to Republican candidates.
State supreme court judicial selection in Virginia
- See also: Judicial selection in Virginia
The seven justices of the supreme court are elected by a majority vote of both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly.[9] Supreme court justices serve 12-year terms. At the end of their terms, judges must be re-selected by the legislature just as they initially were.[9]
Qualifications
To serve on the supreme court, a judge must be:
- a state resident; and
- a state bar member for at least five years.[10]
Chief justice
The chief justice of the court is selected by peer vote. The supreme court chief justice serves in that capacity for four years.[11]
Vacancies
When the General Assembly is in session, midterm vacancies are filled by the same legislative selection process normally used to select judges. When the assembly is not in session, the governor appoints a replacement to serve until 30 days after the start of the next session, by which point a judge must be elected to the seat.[12][13]
The map below highlights how vacancies are filled in state supreme courts across the country.
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 WTOP.com, "Appeals court judge elevated to Virginia Supreme Court," archived January 26, 2015
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 News Leader.com, "'Extraordinary Justice' Sworn In To High Court," March 7, 2015
- ↑ We calculated confidence scores by collecting several data points such as party registration, donations, and previous political campaigns.
- ↑ The five possible confidence scores were: Strong Democrat, Mild Democrat, Indeterminate, Mild Republican, and Strong Republican.
- ↑ Regent University School of Law, "Adjunct Faculty," archived February 24, 2015
- ↑ Report of the Secretary of the Commonwealth (Bluebook), "Judicial Branch," accessed January 21, 2015 Scroll to page 367
- ↑ The seven factors were party registration, donations made to partisan candidates, donations made to political parties, donations received from political parties or bodies with clear political affiliation, participation in political campaigns, the partisanship of the body responsible for appointing the justice, and state trifecta status when the justice joined the court.
- ↑ An Indeterminate score indicates that there is either not enough information about the justice’s partisan affiliations or that our research found conflicting partisan affiliations.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Commonwealth of Virginia Division of Legislatie Services, "A Legislator's Guide to the Judicial Selection Process," accessed April 16, 2025
- ↑ National Center for State Courts, "Methods of Judicial Selection," accessed August 18, 2021
- ↑ National Center for State Courts, "Methods of Judicial Selection," accessed August 18, 2021
- ↑ Commonwealth of Virginia Division of Legislative Services, Judicial Selection Overview, accessed April 16, 2025
- ↑ National Center for State Courts, "Methods of Judicial Selection," accessed August 18, 2021
Federal courts:
Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals • U.S. District Court: Eastern District of Virginia, Western District of Virginia • U.S. Bankruptcy Court: Eastern District of Virginia, Western District of Virginia
State courts:
Virginia Supreme Court • Virginia Court of Appeals • Virginia Circuit Courts • Virginia District Courts • Virginia Magistrates
State resources:
Courts in Virginia • Virginia judicial elections • Judicial selection in Virginia
