394th JUDICIAL DISTRICT — Assistant District Attorney Bill Parham will face off next month with Alpine-based attorney Monty Kimball for the position of 394th District judge, which oversees felonies and civil lawsuits in Presidio, Brewster, Jeff Davis, Hudspeth and Culberson counties — a massive 20,000-square-mile chunk of Texas.
Current District Judge Roy Ferguson announced in December that he would not seek re-election after serving on the bench for 12 years, hoping instead to lean into his statewide work on technology and family law as well as his lifelong project of increasing access to justice. “Overseeing justice in Far West Texas has been the greatest honor of my career,” he tweeted. “Next stop? Wait and see!”
With the only two candidates in the race for 394th District judge running in the Republican primary, the March 5 election will name the new office holder for a four-year term, barring a run-off.
Last week, The Big Bend Sentinel profiled Kimball, a retired attorney with an extensive record. Per an informal count, he’s served in over 500 cases, representing both sides of criminal and civil parties. He plans to run as a one-term candidate because he’d like to make more space for a younger candidate, but insists he still has “gas in the tank” to bring change to the bench.
83rd District First Assistant Attorney Parham has worked as a full-time lawyer for over 33 years — including 15 years in private practice — in 34 different Texas counties. “I have prosecuted and defended individuals charged with speeding tickets to capital murder,” he said.
Parham has served Presidio, Brewster and Jeff Davis counties for the district since 2021. Previously, he worked as a prosecutor for the DA’s office from 2013 to 2016 under Rod Ponton, who served in the top office at the time.
Outside of his work as an attorney, Parham is a member of the Child Protection Law, Family Law, and Criminal Justice Sections of the State Bar of Texas. He also teaches part time at the Sul Ross State University Police Academy, where he helps students understand legal issues specific to their roles as future law enforcement officers in Texas.
If elected to the bench, Parham has a few practical issues he’d like to address. Since the district switched to a remote transcribing service, he’s noticed that it takes an unusually long time for attorneys and members of the public to receive court transcripts. He’d like to return to the traditional pre-internet way of handling business: by hiring an in-person stenographer. “I want an on-call reporter that I could take with me to all five counties,” he said.
Parham hopes that the potential new hire will help him achieve the more abstract goal of processing cases as quickly as possible. “I don’t want the lawyers to have to wait until next month if I can plead somebody today,” he said. “That really speeds things up and actually saves money.”
When he says he’s running as a “full-time judge,” that’s what he means and has plenty of experience responding to calls from law enforcement in the middle of the night. (One time he even answered a call from the local police department in a deer blind.) “That’s exactly what I’m looking at — to be available anytime. That comes with the territory.”
In addition to these projects, he would also like to advocate for the creation of a veterans’ court — providing specific legal services to former members of the armed forces — and to expand availability for status conferences and other measures to check in on folks serving probation.
Above all, Parham believes that judges must be fair, impartial and non-partisan. “A judge cannot be an activist from the bench,” he explained. “I believe in the words above the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court: “Equal Justice Under Law.”