Texas state court judges

Thomas Morrow Reavley (June 21, 1921 – December 1, 2020) was an American jurist who was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Sam Houston Clinton, Jr. (September 17, 1923 – October 5, 2004) was a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge, who as a lawyer represented both atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair and Jack Ruby, the man who shot and killed presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Ruby Kless Sondock (born April 26, 1926) is a former Associate Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. She was the first woman to serve on the Texas Supreme Court.
Sondock initially attended the University of Houston Law Center in order to become a legal secretary, but she was admitted to the state bar a year before her graduation as valedictorian of her class (1962). Sondock was appointed to the Harris County Domestic Relations Court No. 5 in 1973 and to the 234th District Court in 1977. Sondock was the first woman to be appointed as a State District Judge in Harris County, Texas.
Sondock was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court following the death of Associate Justice James G. Denton on June 10, 1982. Sondock served from June 25 to December 31 of that year, completing Denton's term. Sondock declined to seek election to the Supreme Court and instead ran successfully for reelection to her District Court seat the following year. Sondock was the court's first female justice, with the exception of a special all-woman court convened in 1925 to hear a single case. Sondock formed part of the majority of the Texas Supreme Court in the landmark case of Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S. A. v. Hall.
A distinguished legal mind, Sondock has received a number of accolades, including an annual lecture series on legal ethics. Former speakers at the Sondock Lecture on Legal Ethics at the University of Houston Law Center include U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch and Helen Thomas. On November 11, 2015, the Litigation Section of the State Bar of Texas inducted Sondock as a "Texas Legal Legend."

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.