Hon. Christopher J. McFadden

Georgia Court of Appeals

Presiding Judge Christopher J. McFadden was elected in November 2010 for a term beginning January 1, 2011 and reelected in 2016 and 2022. He is a son of the late Isabel McFadden and the late Judge Donald B. McFadden, who served for twenty years as a trial court judge in Akron, Ohio.

Judge McFadden graduated from Oglethorpe University in 1980 and from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1985. He opened his own law office in 1988 and remained a sole practitioner until he joined the Court of Appeals. For most of that time, he practiced in Decatur and focused on appellate litigation. Before joining the Court of Appeals as its 74th judge, he appeared as appellate counsel before 26 of the judges who preceded him.
 
In 1996, along with the late Professor Edward C. Brewer and attorney Charles R. Sheppard, he published Georgia Appellate Practice through the Harrison Company of Norcross, Georgia. With Mr. Sheppard and attorneys Charles M. Cork, III, David A. Webster, Kelly A Weathers, and formerly with the late attorney George W.K. Snyder, Jr., Judge McFadden continues to update it for West, which now publishes it in annual editions.

With attorney Laurie Webb Daniel, he is a founding past Chair of the Appellate Practice Section of the State Bar of Georgia. For twelve years, Judge McFadden served as an officer or director of the Atlanta Bar Association. He is a past chair of its Sole Practitioner/Small Firm and Judicial Sections and is a recipient of the its Distinguished Service and Charles E. Watkins, Jr. Awards, as well as its Judicial Section’s Romae Turner Powell Judicial Service Award.

Judge McFadden is an elected member of The American Law Institute. He presently serves as Chair-elect of  the Appellate Judges Conference of the American Bar Association and chaired its 2018 Appellate Judges Education Institute, which was held in Atlanta. He has served as a volunteer attorney for the Innocence Project and the Election Protection Project. In addition to the Atlanta Bar Association and American Bar Association, he is a member of the DeKalb Bar Association, Lawyers Club of Atlanta, Gate City Bar Association, Federalist Society, American Constitution Society, Saint Thomas More Society and of Oglethorpe University’s Stormy Petrel Bar Association. He served for more than six years on the State Bar of Georgia’s Committee on the Judiciary. He chaired a committee of the Judicial Council of Georgia that drafted the Superior and State Court Appellate Practice Act.

He is a parishioner at St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Decatur, Georgia and has served as a lector since 1988. Judge McFadden is married to Dr. Linda Hyde, Professor of Biology at Gordon State College in Barnesville, Georgia. They have a son.