Hon. Dennis Smith is the chief judge of the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit of Virginia, Fairfax County. His colleagues elected him chief judge in 2007, and he is in his fourth two-year term. He served as a commissioner in chancery for the 19th Circuit from 1987-95; as a substitute judge for the general district and juvenile and domestic relations district courts; and as a principal in Shoun, Smith & Bach, P.C., concentrating in family law. He served as chairperson of the Judicial Education Committee of the Judicial Conference of Virginia; as a Virginia representative to the 1999 National Symposium on the Future of Judicial Branch Education and the 2012 National Summit on Language Access in the Courts; as a member of the Virginia Supreme Court’s Pro Se Litigation Planning Committee and the Governor’s Task Force on Alternatives for Non-Violent Offenders; and as chair of the Virginia Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on the Establishment of a Family Court. He is co-chairperson of the Planning Committee and on the faculty for the Judicial Conference of Virginia’s Workshop on Handling Capital Cases; serves on the committee that edits the Virginia civil and criminal bench books; and is president-elect of the National Conference of Metropolitan Courts. Since 2000 he has been adjunct faculty for George Mason University School of Law teaching Virginia family law. Judge Smith was born in Brooklyn, New York, and received a B.A. from Brooklyn College (1975) and a law degree from Washington College of Law of the American University (1978).
