Hon. James C. Ho

James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, appointed on January 4, 2018. 

Prior to his appointment, he was a partner in the Dallas office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and co-chair of the firm’s national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group.  Over the course of a decade as an appellate lawyer, he presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide.  He has won three cases at the U.S. Supreme Court (Sause v. Bauer, 138 S. Ct. 2561 (2018), Sossamon v. Texas, 563 U.S. 277 (2011), and Thaler v. Haynes, 559 U.S. 43 (2010)). 

Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government.  As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee staff, he was appointed chief counsel to U.S. Senator John Cornyn and the Judiciary Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration.  At the Justice Department, he was a Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel.  He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

In addition, Judge Ho has worked in state government, most recently as the Solicitor General of Texas, the state’s chief appellate and Supreme Court litigator.  Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp. 

Judge Ho has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, senior editor of the Green Bag, co-editor of Pub. L. Misc., and vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas. 

Taiwanese by birth and Texan by marriage, Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors.  He and his wife Allyson, a distinguished appellate litigator at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, have a twin daughter and son.