Kanawha Family Court Judge Jim Douglas
CHARLESTON – Jim Douglas wants to bring his decades of family court experience to the West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals.
Douglas, currently a Kanawha County Family Court Judge, has filed pre-candidacy papers to run for the ICA in the 2026 election. ICA Judge Dan Greear’s seat is up for election. Greear has announced plans to seek re-election.
Because a large part of the Intermediate Court of Appeals docket consists of family court matters, candidate Douglas says having a judge on the bench with family court experience is important.
“There’s a high volume of these cases that go up to the Intermediate Court of Appeals,” Douglas said. “The ICA claims 21 percent of its docket is family law.
“They have a pretty big docket, but a big chunk of that is family law. And to me, there is nothing more important than family law. It’s all about family and kids.
“As a candidate, other than what little bit of appellate experience they’ve had since 2022, I don’t see that the Intermediate Court judges had any family court experience before June of 2022. Before that, those judges who are sitting there now had no practical practice experience in family court matters. And I think that kind of bleeds through in the decisions they’ve had up to this point in time.”
Douglas says he would bring practical experience, practice experience and judicial experience to the ICA bench.
“I have experience in family court matters, and I have almost nine years of judicial experience,” he said. “These are significant cases, and I think these things are vitally important. As a candidate, I don’t think there is a lot of deference being paid to prior family law decisions from the Supreme Court. They’re looking at it from a short-term appellate perspective, and I think they haven’t paid a lot of attention to precedent.
“The predictability function has been severely affected. As a candidate, I think the consistency of the decisions is not being sufficiently considered. There is no fealty given to prior decisions, not adhering to precedents. Also, I see that there are very few signed opinions, but a lot of memorandum decisions.”
Douglas said people’s lives are greatly determined by the rulings in family court cases.
“When a case does go up to the Intermediate Court of Appeals, when they rule on it, it has an effect on everyone in the state,” he said. “My quest, as a candidate, is to get some consistency on the Intermediate Court of Appeals in family law based on practical experience – experience the court didn’t have before 2022.”
Douglas has talked before about the lack of family court experience on the ICA before the court was created in 2022.
He recently was admonished by the state Judicial Investigation Commission for an email he sent to family court judges across the state and others regarding “the absence of family law scholarship and experience on the ICA.” He filed an objection to the admonishment.
Douglas has run unsuccessfully twice previously for a seat on the state Supreme Court. He said those campaigns were educational.
“I think that getting about 20 percent (of the vote) each time is very encouraging,” he said. “I think I picked up some name recognition across the state. I carried 11 counties.
“I learned people out there are fed up with the time it takes to litigate these issues. People are disturbed and disgruntled family court doesn’t work as efficiently as possible. Some of that is caused by waiting for ICA rulings, in my opinion as a candidate.”
Douglas said his ICA campaign will be half 21st Century and half 19th Century.
“Part of me has to be dragged into the 21st Century,” he joked, referencing social media advertising and geo-targeting. “But there is no substitute for someone looking you in the face and talking to you. I’ll be doing that. Pressing the flesh, being face to face.”
He said he’s made several contacts across the state, having been to the Eastern Panhandle twice.
“People I’ve talked to always have three main complaints,” Douglas said. “One is about roads. The second is about the DMV, and the third is always family courts. They complain about the time it takes for family law decisions.”
Douglas was born in Sutton and raised in Charleston; Ohio; and Ivydale, Clay County. He has a 1973 bachelor’s degree from Morris Harvey College (now the University of Charleston), a 1975 master’s degree from West Virginia University in German history and literature and a 1977 law degree from West Virginia University College of Law, where he served as president of the Student Bar Association.
He was elected to the Kanawha Family Court bench in 2016 and was re-elected in 2024. Before that, he was a solo practitioner since 1977, specializing in divorce and family law. He also served as the Braxton County prosecuting attorney from 1985 to 1988.
Douglas is a member of the American Bar Association Family Law Section and the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. He also was a faculty member for the Lawyer Education Institute.
He also frequently teaches Continuing Legal Education courses for attorneys and judges. He is instructing several courses next year at an American Institute for Justice CLE titled Realities of Judging: Practical Insights from Experience Jurists. It takes places October 2026 at Isla Bella Beach Resort in Marathon, Fla.
Douglas and his son Jarod, an assistant U.S. Attorney in West Virginia’s Northern District, also recently were honored by being nominated together as Fellows of the American Bar Foundation Foundation.
