Governor Brown Appoints Marin Attorney to County Superior Court

Governor Jerry Brown announced the appointments of six new judges to fill vacancies on Bay Area superior courts, among them Marin County attorney Mark Andrew Talamantes.

Talamantes, 46, of Tiburon, has been a managing partner at Talamantes Villegas Carrera LLP since 2004. He was a partner at Talamantes and Villegas from 2001 to 2004 and a founding partner at the Law Offices of Mark Talamantes from 1998 to 2001.

Talamantes was an associate at Brooke Oliver and Associates from 1997 to 1998. He earned a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Texas Tech University. Talamantes fills the vacancy created by the conversion of a court commissioner position on July 1, 2011.

Talamantes, like all of the governor’s appointees, is a Democrat. The trial court judgeships have an annual salary of $178,789.

“I believe I will be the first Latino appointed to the Marin County bench,” Talamantes told the Marin Independent Journal. “Coming from my background, it is a very humbling experience for me and my family. I'm very grateful.”

According to the Marin IJ, most of the workers Talamantes has represented live outside of Marin, but in 2003, he represented eight employees of a Marin dairy who claimed that they were “forced to live in substandard housing and work off the clock.”

Talamantes will be sworn into office on Monday.

Talamantes is a frequent lecturer on the topics of wage and hour employment litigation and collecting attorneys’ fees in the State of California. In 2012 and 2011, Talamantes participated on a panel discussion at the state convention of the California Employment Lawyers Association regarding notable victories and complex impact litigation.

Profiled by Plaintiffs Magazine in March 2012, Mr. Talamantes serves as a representative of the Bar Association of San Francisco on the Board of Directors of California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc.

The governor’s other five appointees include:

• Oakland attorney Kimberly Colwell and public-interest lawyer Brad Seligman were named to serve with Alameda County Superior Court.
• Napa County Deputy Public Defender Elia Ortiz, 39, was appointed by Brown to Napa County Superior Court.
• Criminal defense lawyer Brendan Conroy and Assistant San Francisco District Attorney Braden Woods to San Francisco Superior Court. 

Bay City News Service contributed to this report. Copyright © 2012 by Bay City News, Inc. -- Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.