Chief Justice
2005 - Present

Chief Justice Tom Parker was first elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2004 and was reelected in 2010 and in 2016. He was elected Chief Justice in 2018.

Chief Justice Parker previously served as the Deputy Administrative Director of Courts, where he served as General Counsel for the Alabama court system, advising trial court judges, and as the Director of the Alabama Judicial College, providing training for new judges and continuing legal education for all trial judges in Alabama. In that capacity, he also served as the Legal Adviser to the Chief Justice.

Chief Justice Parker graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, and received his Juris Doctorate from Vanderbilt University School of Law, in Nashville, Tennessee. He won a Rotary International Fellowship to study law at the University of São Paulo School of Law, in São Paulo, Brazil, where he was the first foreign student in Brazil's most prestigious law school.

Chief Justice Parker served in the Alabama Attorney General's Office under then Alabama Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and Bill Pryor. As an Assistant Attorney General, he handled death-penalty cases, criminal appeals, and constitutional litigation. Previously, he was a partner in Parker & Kotouc, P.C., a Montgomery law firm that handled many high-profile constitutional cases.

Chief Justice Parker was founding Executive Director of the Alabama Family Alliance (now the Alabama Policy Institute), a state organization associated with Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family.

Chief Justice Parker is a Montgomery native -- the son of the late Tommy Parker and Gloria Parker Pennington, and the stepson of the late Harry L. Pennington of Huntsville. He was elected student-body president at Montgomery's Sidney Lanier High School and Speaker of the House of both the YMCA Youth Legislature and Boys' State.

Chief Justice Parker and his wife, the former Dottie James of Auburn, have been married for 42 years. Dottie served as Supervisor of the Alabama Governor's Mansion during the administration of Alabama Governor Fob James. They are members of Frazer Church.