LAURIE DUDGEON is the director of the Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts and oversees nearly 3,300 employees, including 403 elected justices, judges, and circuit court clerks. She administers the $365 million judicial branch budget, drafts and promotes passage of legislation affecting the courts, and works with officials at the state, national and county levels. Ms. Dudgeon has streamlined the organizational structure of the AOC and maintained a balanced judicial branch budget in spite of deep reductions during the state’s financial crisis. She is leading the judicial branch’s efforts to replace Kentucky’s obsolete court case management system with one that will support eFiling, eRecords, video arraignment, and accounts payable. In 2013 she orchestrated the relocation of the AOC’s offices to a lease-for-purchase property, which will allow the AOC to own its building for the first time in its history. Ms. Dudgeon is a 2012 alumna of the prestigious Toll Fellowship Program, one of the nation’s premier leadership development programs for state government officials. She previously served as executive director of the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy and as a staff attorney in the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet. She focused on constitutional law, employment law, administrative law, and commercial and residential real estate law during nine years in private practice at three law firms in Kentucky and South Carolina. She graduated from the University of Kentucky with a bachelor’s degree in 1991 and a juris doctor in 1994.
