NORTHAMPTON — With approval Wednesday from the Governor’s Council, an attorney practicing in Southampton will join the Massachusetts Superior Court, while a Springfield lawyer will become the next associate justice for the Northampton District Court.
At a meeting at the Statehouse in Boston, the council unanimously approved the nominations of Francis “Frank” E. Flannery to serve on the Massachusetts Superior Court and Kevin V. Maltby to become an associate justice of the Northampton District Court.
Nominated by Gov. Charlie Baker, and supported by Mary Hurley of East Longmeadow, the elected councilor for District 8, which serves the four westernmost Massachusetts counties, both men are expected to begin their new jobs soon.
Emily Gauthier, deputy director of the Judicial Nominating Commission, said Flannery and Maltby will reach out to the chief justice of the court on which they will serve to identify a start date that is conducive to their schedules. Once this start date is determined, an internal process in Baker’s office will lead to the oath of office being given.
“Then you have the governor or lieutenant governor swear them in,” Gauthier said, noting that the oath of office is sometimes administered on the day a judge’s tenure begins.
State law requires that Maltby and Flannery be sworn in within 90 days of their appointment, though Gauthier said this usually happens less than a month after the Governor’s Council vote because vacancies need to be filled as soon as possible.
The unanimous votes came three weeks after the council held hours-long hearings on both candidates that included numerous questions and testimony from colleagues and friends.
At Maltby’s hearing, retired Superior Court Judge Peter Velis of Westfield described him as a “man who should someday wear a robe.”
“I can tell you every bit of his personality, both as a lawyer and a person, is the same as the first day I met him,” Velis said.
At Flannery’s hearing, retired Superior Court Judge Mary-Lou Rup testified on his behalf.
“There is consistently extraordinary preparation put into his cases and he is very poised, very calm and has a very clear grasp of the law,” Rup said.
Both men also met with the public at forums sponsored by Hurley at the Western New England University campus in Springfield. At Maltby’s forum, Hurley described him as an attorney with high moral standing.
Efforts to reach Flannery and Maltby at their law offices Wednesday afternoon were not successful.
Maltby is a partner at the law firm Bacon Wilson P.C. in Springfield, where he has practiced a variety of civil litigation, as well as criminal defense, since 2006. He will take the seat left vacant by Thomas Estes of Northampton, who resigned after being suspended for engaging in sexual acts with a social worker in his chambers.
Maltby serves on the Supreme Judicial Court’s Standing Committee on Professionalism and is a former president of the Hampden County Bar Association. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Suffolk University Law School. He is also an adjunct professor in legal studies at Bay Path University.
Flannery, who practices at the law office of Parker & O’Grady, lives in Holyoke and earned his doctorate in law from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, after earning a bachelor’s degree from UMass Amherst. He previously served as an assistant district attorney for the Northwestern district attorney’s office.
The state’s Superior Court has 82 justices who sit in 20 courthouses in each of the state’s 14 counties. The Superior Court has exclusive original jurisdiction of first-degree murder cases and original jurisdiction of all other crimes.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
