Thomas R. Phillips

Who is Thomas R. Phillips?

Thomas Royal Phillips is an attorney with the Baker Botts firm in Austin, Texas, who was from 1988 to 2004 the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas. With nearly seventeen years of service, Phillips is the third-longest tenured Chief Justice in Texas history. He was appointed by Governor Bill Clements and was at that time the youngest Chief Justice since Texas became a state. In November 1988, he became the first Republican to be elected Chief Justice in the state's history. Phillips retired from the court in 2004 to return to the private sector. Governor Rick Perry appointed Associate Justice Wallace B. Jefferson to succeed Phillips.

Phillips graduated as valedictorian in 1968 from Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, and thereafter from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1989, Phillips was inducted into Woodrow Wilson High School's Hall of Fame, which was created at that time to celebrate the school's 60th anniversary.

In 2010, Phillips and his former judicial colleague, Craig T.