Gov. Greg Abbott has announced an appointment to the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas, naming current Collin Country District Judge Emily Miskel to the seat.
She will replace Justice Leslie Osborne who had held Seat 13 since 2018 and whose term did not expire until 2024. Osborne stepped down from the court recently for family reasons.
This marks Miskel’s second judicial appointment. She was appointed in August 2015 to serve as the judge of the 470th District Court, a family court that was created that same year to reduce case backlog. She won reelection to the seat in 2016 and 2020.
Before entering the judiciary, Miskel worked at KoonsFuller for six years and at Thompson & Knight for one year before that.
Miskel did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Wednesday morning. She shared the news on her Twitter profile Tuesday afternoon.
“Big news — I’m thrilled!” she wrote, sharing a press release from the governor making the announcement.
The post garnered 89 replies of congratulations, mostly from attorneys and judges across the state.
She presided over the nation’s first-ever remote jury trial and championed the use of technology to keep courts open during the pandemic, earning her the William H. Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence — the highest honor a state court judge can receive from the National Center for State Courts in September 2020.
She was nominated for the honor by Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht and then-Texas State Court Administrator David Slayton, who wrote in a nomination letter that Miskel had emerged as a “true leader” in “historically challenging times.”
In March 2020, she also presided over the first remote hearing and first virtual bench trial in Texas.
In November’s election, Miskel, a Republican, lost to Dallas County District Judge Maricela Moore, a Democrat, in a tight race for Seat 4 on the Fifth Court of Appeals, securing 49.2 percent of the vote to Moore’s 50.8 percent. Moore garnered 17,393 more votes than Miskel.
Miskel is a 2002 graduate of Stanford University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. She worked as a project engineer handling design, construction and permitting services for oil and gas pipelines and refineries for nearly three years after finishing her undergraduate work.
Then she attended Harvard Law School, where she graduated in 2008.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the county where Judge Miskel presides.