Part-time Faculty
Hon. Thomas More Donnelly
Biography
Tom is an Associate Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County. He is assigned to the First Municipal District. He sat hearing civil matters in the Daley Center for the last four years, but currently presides over misdemeanor jury trials. Previous to those assignments, he sat in traffic and domestic violence courtrooms. He serves on the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on IPI Jury Instructions-Criminal and on the Illinois Supreme Court Advanced Judicial Academy Planning Committee. He served as an peer reviewer for the Illinois Judicial Benchbook on Civil Law and Procedure, just published in August 2008. Before becoming a judge, Tom served as an assistant public defender in Cook County for 13 years. For 11 of those 13 years, he was a supervisor in the training, first municipal, and post conviction units. He has both trial and appellate court experience.
He serves on two Illinois bodies that give advisory opinions in ethics issues: the Illinois Judicial Ethics Committee, and the Illinois State Bar Association (ISBA) Standing Committee on Professional Conduct. He has chaired both the CBA Chicago Bar Association (CBA) Professional Responsibility Committee and the ISBA ethics committee. He coauthored an online annotation on Illinois Legal Ethics for Cornell Law School available at http://www.law.cornell.edu/ethics/Illinois.html. He is also a member of the ISBA Civil Practice Section Counsel. He served as the Reporter for the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Professional Responsibility (1996-2000).
Tom also serves as an adjunct professor at Loyola Law School, where he also directs the Philip H. Corboy Trial Advocacy Fellowship. He has directed the fellowship for the past ten years. He currently teaches Illinois Litigation at Loyola. He has taught Illinois Tax Litigation and Procedure, Professional Responsibility, and Criminal Procedure at Loyola. He is a past recipient of the St. Robert Bellarmine Award for a distinguished young alumnus and is an honorary member of Loyola's Circle of Advocates.
He has taught trial advocacy at the University of Chicago Law School in the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic. He has lectured at Washington and Lee Law School, Marquette Law School, and DePaul Law School.
He recently authored Survey of Illinois Law: Enforcement of Judgment, 31 S.IU.L.J. 819 (2006) (coauthored with Judge Sanjay Tailor) and The Leaven of the World: Serving the Poor is Neither the Air in the Balloon nor the Cherry on the Sundae 43 Gonz.L.Rev. 607 (2007-2008).
He sits on boards of the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Chicago, Lawyers Lend a Hand to Youth, the John Howard Association, and the National Center for the Laity. He is the father of four boys and married to Anne Wicker. They live in Queen of Angels Parish in the Lincoln Square Neighborhood of Chicago.
| Education: | B.A., St. John's College, 1981 J.D., Loyola Chicago, 1986 |
| Present Position: | Associate Judge, Circuit Court of Cook County |
| Course taught: | Illinois Litigation Professional Responsibility Seminar |
| Contact: | 555 West Harrison Room 304 Chicago, IL 60607 312-325-9010 tdonnel@cookcountygov.com |
