Anyone who wants to visit with the 23rd Judicial District’s new chief judge is greeted with a partially completed Lego model of the Titanic. They can tinker away at the model while they wait in the sitting area outside of his courtroom office. The model currently sits in five different pieces.
Chief Judge Ryan Stuart served as a district court judge in the 18th Judicial District. But from May 2023 to January, he was the administrative judge responsible for ensuring a smooth transition of staff and services to the state’s new 23rd Judicial District. The new district became official earlier this year and it’s the first time in 62 years the Colorado Judicial Department has created a new judicial district.
The new district serves Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties and is led by Stuart.
Stuart got his law degree in 2003 from Georgetown University Law Center and earned his master’s degree in education from Harvard University. Before he was appointed the chief judge of the new district, he was a district court judge in the 18th Judicial District and served as a county judge in Jefferson County. Stuart also co-founded a school in Castle Rock and regularly volunteers his time there.
“I was born here in Denver, but then grew up in New Mexico and came back as quickly as I could with my wife after school,” Stuart told Law Week. “I have three kids. My oldest is going to be a senior in college next year. My middle is going to be a freshman in college, and then my youngest is going to be a freshman in high school.”
A travel lover, Stuart said he’s also drawn to any kind of water related activity — swimming, scuba and paddle boarding included. He’s a builder of things too, as demonstrated by the Titanic model just outside and a massive Lego village in his office. Perhaps that’s what made him such a good fit to lead a new judicial district.
“I started in civil litigation at a firm downtown, did that for a couple years and never really saw the inside of a courtroom, and that’s why I wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer,” Stuart said. “I enjoyed the trial work I did [for a] mock trial in high school and college and and so my mentor at the firm was somebody who used to work at a DA office, and he would tell all these great stories about when he was a DA and the cases he worked on, and the trials he got to work on.”
Stuart said his mentor helped him get a job at the Jefferson County DA’s Office. He’s been in the criminal realm ever since.
His path to the new judicial district involved a move, but luckily not a second one.
“I was appointed to the 18th and moved to Castle Rock right before my appointment, but then was assigned to the Arapahoe County Courthouse in a district court division, and then when the split was getting ready to happen, I was one of the judges that then had to, because [of] residency requirements, be in either the Douglas, Elbert or Lincoln courthouses,” Stuart explained.
Much like the monumental task of building scale Lego masterpieces like the Titanic, Stuart didn’t seem daunted by the task of building up a new judicial district as chief judge. He said the work has been largely the same, case-wise, but the team for the new district was able to form its own identity and culture, which Stuart said has been a benefit.
“We’ve been able to celebrate the opening of the 23rd sort of in a honeymoon phase,” Stuart told Law Week. “Now, everybody’s excited about some new ideas that people are bringing to how we might want to operate. We’re getting a facility dog here soon for the courthouses to help employees, litigants, jurors that are in difficult cases.” He added that being able to make more localized decisions that the district thinks are important for the community has been helpful.
The dog will be arriving at the end of July or early August, according to Stuart, but a fluffy friend won’t be the only new addition to the state’s newest judicial district. The Colorado Legislature also approved appointing some new judges to the 23rd, including a new district court judge and a new county court judge for Douglas County.
“The district court judge will start this July, the county court judge will start next July, so [each judge] will now have fewer cases to handle, [and] they’ll be able to handle them much more quickly,” Stuart said. “My hope is that people will get their cases heard much more quickly and be more satisfied with the length of time that it takes to hear their cases. We’re still coming out of that period in COVID where there [were] a lot of delays, and getting through that backlog of cases, and this will help us to address that and some of the lingering issues we’ve had of just not having enough judges in the [23rd].”
Another issue courts tackled during COVID was allowing for virtual participation, and while Stuart noted they had to implement a virtual solution quickly, courthouses are staying on their toes to tweak and modify systems, to allow for easier participation while preventing disruptors from infiltrating proceedings.
A lot of courts and attorneys seemed to struggle in the early days of virtual court proceedings, with one attorney famously leaving a filter on that made him look like a cat. But Stuart said the funniest thing that’s happened in his virtual courtroom was a litigant without a shirt lying next to a pool.
“I’ve [also had] situations where I’ve been really embarrassed, where somebody was laying down,” Stuart explained. “And I started to ask, ‘Why are you laying down?’ And then the attorney quickly stopped me and said, ‘Your Honor, my client is quadriplegic,’ and I froze in embarrassment because I was getting ready to call out somebody for not having proper etiquette. And so I’ve learned from that experience to not assume anything.”
That’s exactly the situation that has made virtual court proceedings so accessible though, Stuart went on to note. It’s helped people have greater access to the state’s courtrooms.
Navigating a courtroom through the pandemic and building up a new district could be quite a challenge for any leader. When asked about his leadership style, Stuart paused before saying he tries to lead by example.
“I’ve worked for a number of people, good leaders and not so good leaders,” Stuart explained. “And I think those leaders that have walked the walk themselves and worked hard and treated people kindly and were transparent in the decision making that they made — those were the best leaders, and so I tried to model myself off with that.”
Stuart later asked some of his colleagues about what they thought his leadership style was and one of them reminded him of the first chief judge order he signed when they became the 23rd Judicial District. The order read “Work well, be kind, assist others.”
Intentionally brief and to the point, Stuart said it set his expectations of everyone working in the district.
When asked what made him passionate about the law, Stuart said the impacts of law are daily and varied for people, noting that working on such a critical system could help improve the lives of many people.
“Law impacts so much of our lives and when I was in college and trying to decide what to do with my life, I had a lot of interests. I was interested in public policy. I was interested in education, policy, land use, our criminal justice system — and the law impacted all of those things,” Stuart said. “I decided to study law so that I could have the tools and the language to be able to understand a lot of different areas, and [I was] interested in public policy and making lives better for people. I saw the law as the way I could do that.”