Vocation : Law : Jurist

Charles Ruford Holcomb (born 1933) is a retired Texas judge who served on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals from 2001 to 2010.
He graduated from Robert E. Lee High School. He attended Lee College in Baytown and Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, for his undergraduate education. He served in the United States Air Force Reserve from 1951 to 1953; he then graduated in 1958 from South Texas College of Law.From 1959 to 1966, he was the city attorney, first for Deer Park and then for Orange in far southeastern Texas. In 1967, he was elected to the County Court at Law of Orange County and served until 1972. During the school term of 1970–1971, he was also adjunct professor of Government at the Lamar University extension campus in Orange.From 1972 to 1981, he was in private practice with Cox, Holcomb & Sinclair, contemporaneously serving Cherokee County as county attorney from 1974 until 1981, when he was elected district attorney for the same county, a position he retained until 1991.In 1992, he was elected as a Democrat for the position of Justice of the Twelfth Court of Appeals, a post he held 1998. From 1998 to 2000, he sat by assignment in trial and appellate courts as a senior judge. Judge Holcomb was elected to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000 as a Republican. His term on the Court of Criminal Appeals began in 2001. Holcomb, then seventy-one, was required by law not to serve as an active judge after he turned seventy-five in September 2008.He faced two challengers for re-election in the Republican primary election in 2006, Judge Robert Francis of Dallas, and then State Representative Terry Keel of Austin. Keel challenged both Holcomb and Francis for technical flaws in their applications to be on the ballot. Holcomb's candidacy was affirmed by the Texas Supreme Court and he won re-nomination and reelection. After his re-election, the Texas Constitution was amended to allow judges who turn seventy-five during their term to serve-out a four-year term, meaning Holcomb could serve four years of his six-year term. Holcomb retired from the Court of Criminal Appeals in 2010 and decided to run for the Senate election in 2012, but the nomination instead went to Ted Cruz, who won the party runoff election against David Dewhurst.

William Lockhart Garwood (October 29, 1931 – July 14, 2011) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Edward Cornelius Reed Jr. (July 8, 1924 – June 1, 2013) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada.

Warren John Ferguson (October 31, 1920 – June 25, 2008) was an American jurist who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Herman Paul Pressler III (born June 4, 1930), is an American judge who was a justice of the Texas 14th Circuit Court of Appeals in his native Houston, Texas. Pressler was a key figure in the conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention, which he initiated in 1978. He has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least six men, some of whom were underage at the time of the alleged activity.

John Andrew Young (November 10, 1916 – January 22, 2002) was a Democratic politician from Texas who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1957 to 1979.
Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, Young attended Incarnate Word Academy and Corpus Christi College-Academy. He earned his B.A. at St. Edward's University in 1937 and his L.L.B from the University of Texas School of Law in 1940. After starting his career as a lawyer, he served in the United States Navy from 1941 to 1945.
Young served as a lawyer for Nueces County, Texas in various positions, as assistant county attorney in 1946, assistant district attorney from 1947 to 1950, county attorney from 1951 to 1952 and county judge from 1953 to 1956. He ran successfully as a Democrat for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1956, defeating incumbent John J. Bell in the primary election and winning the general election. He took seat in 1957 and was reelected ten times. Young voted against the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, but voted in favor the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968.Young came under fire in 1976 when a former female member of his staff, Colleen Gardner, accused him of requiring her to have sex with him in order to keep her job. Young, who was married with five children at the time, denied the accusation and an investigation produced no evidence. His wife, Jane, committed suicide on July 13, 1977, by a gunshot to the head.The scandal caused his defeat to Joseph P. Wyatt, Jr. in the primary election in 1978 and he left office in 1979.
Afterwards, he worked as a consultant until his death on January 22, 2002. He was interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

Graham Boynton Purcell Jr. (May 5, 1919 – June 11, 2011), was a United States representative from Texas' 13th congressional district.
Born in Archer City in Archer County, a part of the Wichita Falls metropolitan statistical area, Purcell attended public schools and received his Bachelor of Science from the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas in 1946, and his LL.B. in 1949 from Baylor Law School in Waco, Texas.
Purcell served in the United States Army during World War II from 1941 to 1946 and served thereafter in the United States Army Reserve.
He served as judge of the Eighty-ninth Judicial District Court of Texas from 1955 to 1962. He was a delegate to the 1960 and 1964 Democratic national conventions, which met in Los Angeles and Atlantic City, New Jersey, respectively to nominate the Kennedy-Johnson and the Johnson-Humphrey tickets, both of which prevailed in Texas.
Purcell was elected to the Eighty-seventh Congress, by special election, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of fellow Democrat, Representative Frank N. Ikard. He was reelected to the five succeeding congresses (January 27, 1962 – January 3, 1973). In 1966, when John Tower won his second term as U. S. senator, Purcell defeated the Republican Dillard Carlisle "Bunny" Norwood (1913-1993) of Wichita Falls.

On November 22, 1963, Purcell was riding in the motorcade's third vehicle behind U.S. President Kennedy during the assassination in Dallas, Texas.
Although Texas gained a seat as a result of the 1970 Census, Purcell's 13th District was dismantled, and his home in Wichita Falls was merged with the Panhandle-based 18th District of Republican Bob Price for the 1972 elections. The new district was numerically Purcell's district—the 13th—but was geographically more Price's district. Purcell retained only one-third of his former constituents. Forced to run in territory that he did not know and that did not know him, Purcell was defeated by nine points.
In 1993, House bill HR 2292 was passed designating the federal building in Wichita Falls as the Graham B. Purcell Jr. Post Office and Federal Building. Purcell resided in Wichita Falls until his death at the age of ninety-two.

Harold Raymond DeMoss Jr. (December 30, 1930 – April 29, 2020) was a former United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.