West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals issued the following announcement on Sept. 10.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Beth Walker has appointed Twenty-Second Judicial Circuit (Hampshire, Hardy and Pendleton Counties) Judge C. Carter Williams to lead the West Virginia Court Improvement Program (CIP) Oversight Board. Judge Williams replaces Ninth Judicial Circuit (Mercer County) Judge Derek Swope, who recently resigned from the CIP Board. Judge Swope, who will continue to serve as a circuit judge, had taken on the additional unpaid duty of leading the CIP Board in 2017. “Judge Williams is eager to continue his earlier service to children in abuse and neglect cases and will be a great leader of this very important program,” said Chief Justice Walker. “The Court thanks Judge Swope for his dedicated work on the CIP.” The Supreme Court established the CIP Board in 1995 as a result of the federal Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. That act designated federal funding beginning in fiscal year 1995 for grants to state court systems to conduct assessments of their foster case laws and judicial processes and to develop and implement a plan for system improvement.
The Oversight Board is the advisory group and task force to implement the program in West Virginia, and continues to obtain federal grant funding every year. Judge Williams is a native of Hardy County. He has a 1988 bachelor’s degree from West Virginia University, and a 1991 law degree from the West Virginia University College of Law. He was elected to the bench in May 2016, and took office on January 1, 2017.
From 1999 through 2016 he was as an Assistant Attorney General. At the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office he served as state-wide legal counsel for the Adult Protective Services Division of the Department of Health and Human Resources and was regional legal counsel for the Bureau for Children and Families in fifteen counties including the Eastern Panhandle. He also was a member of the CIP Oversight Board from 2009 through 2012. At the time of his election to the circuit bench, he also was also a member of the West Virginia Financial Exploitation Task Force, and the West Virginia Working Interdisciplinary Network of Guardianship Stakeholders.
Judge Williams was an associate attorney at the law firm of Bowles Rice McDavid Graff & Love from 1991 to 1993, before becoming an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in Hampshire County, a job he held from 1993 to 1995. He was also employed as an associate with Geary & Geary, LC, from 1995 until becoming an Assistant Attorney General.
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