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.
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.