Hon. Samuel A. Thumma J.D., Judge

Samuel Anderson Thumma. Judge, Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One. Prior to his appointment to the Court of Appeals in 2012, Sam served for nearly five years as a Judge on the Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County, in criminal and juvenile rotations. He co-chairs the Arizona Supreme Court’s Committee on the Rules of Evidence; is co-editor of the ARIZONA APPELLATE HANDBOOK and is an Arizona Uniform State Laws Commissioner and delegate to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. Sam is an Advisor to the American Law Institute’s RESTATEMENT OF THE LAW (THIRD) OF TORTS: LIABILITY FOR ECONOMIC LOSS and a member of the Judicial Advisory Board for The Sedona Conference. His current American Bar Association activities include serving on the Judicial Division and Appellate Judges Conference Ethics & Professionalism Committees. 

Sam serves on the State Bar of Arizona’s Committee on Rules of Professional Conduct, has chaired both the Civil Practice & Procedure and Fee Arbitration Committees and serves as president of the Thurgood Marshall Inn of Court. Sam has taught as an Adjunct Professor at the Arizona State University College of Law and has presented at more than 160 national, state and local seminars on various legal topics. He has published 8 law review, and more than 35 other, articles. 

Prior to his appointment to the bench, Sam was a partner at Perkins Coie Brown & Bain, P.A., Phoenix, where he served on the Phoenix Office Management Committee; a partner and associate at Brown & Bain, P.A., and an associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. He served as a law clerk for Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Stanley G. Feldman and Judge David R. Hansen, United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa. Sam graduated Order of the Coif, with high honors, from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1988, where he was a Note & Comment Editor on the IOWA LAW REVIEW, and graduated from Iowa State University in 1984, where he was the Harry S. Truman Memorial Scholar from Iowa.