Four sitting judges will keep their seats on the bench of the Montgomery County Circuit Court, according to state elections board results posted early Wednesday morning.
Judges Marybeth Ayres, Jennifer Fairfax, Louis Leibowitz and J. Bradford McCullough ran unopposed for the four seats. A challenger, Rockville attorney Marylin Pierre, did not win one of the available nominations during the May primary.
With 256 of 257 election day precincts reporting as of 4:34 a.m., the four judges had each won between 24% and 25.6% of the total votes cast:
• Ayres, 25.58%
• Fairfax, 25.46%
• Leibowitz, 24.27%
• McCullough, 23.99%
The Circuit Court at 50 Maryland Ave. in Rockville serves Montgomery and Frederick counties, according to the court’s website. Judges assigned to the court determine the outcome “in serious criminal matters, substantive civil cases, domestic cases, and child support cases.”
In Maryland, Circuit Court judges are vetted and appointed by the governor. After they are appointed, judges are required to run for a 15-year term in an election, according to state law. The law allows any lawyer older than 30 years of age who is a state resident, has lived in the circuit for six months and is a member of the Maryland Bar to run for election to the circuit court bench. Vetting is not required.
Ayres, 52, was appointed in 2022 by then-Gov. Larry Hogan (R). Before her appointment to the bench, she was an assistant state’s attorney for the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office from 2004 to 2008 and 2011 to 2022.
Fairfax, 52, of Silver Spring was appointed by Gov. Wes Moore (D) in 2023. Before becoming a judge, Fairfax founded and ran a law firm from 2008 until 2023.
Leibowitz, the youngest of the four sitting judges at 49, was appointed by Hogan in 2022. Before becoming an associate judge, Leibowitz was a solo practitioner of the Law Office of Louis M. Leibowitz in Rockville from 2011 to 2022.
McCullough was appointed to the bench by Hogan in 2022. Before his judgeship, McCullough, 58, was a commercial litigator and appellate attorney for the Bethesda-based Lerch, Early & Brewer law firm. He lives outside of Rockville.
Why do judges run for election?
That process is now coming into question. A judicial workgroup is recommending that Maryland end contested elections for its 175 Circuit Court judges, saying the process presents ethical problems and poses a risk to judges’ safety in the current political atmosphere.
Instead of standing for reelection every 15 years in a campaign in which they could face challengers, the workgroup said Circuit Court judges should face voters every 10 years in a retention election, where voters have a simple yes-or-no choice of whether to keep the judge on the bench.
Instances of Circuit Court candidates bypassing the vetting process and winning a judgeship as a challenger were nearly unheard of until 2000. Since then, about a dozen judges initially appointed by the governor have been ousted by general election challengers, with about one-third of those races in 2020.
In 2020, Montgomery County, the state’s largest jurisdiction, was the site of a hotly contested general election for Circuit Court judge when Pierre unsuccessfully challenged four incumbent judges previously seated on the bench via gubernatorial appointment.
In the May primary election, Pierre again fell short in her bid to win a seat on the bench for the fourth time in six years.
MoCo360 politics freelancer Louis Peck contributed to this story.
