Gov. Wes Moore made one appointment to the Anne Arundel Circuit Court and one to the Anne Arundel District Court to replace two retiring judges, his office announced earlier this month.

Judge-designee Ginina Alexandra Jackson-Stevenson will fill Glenn L. Klavans’ role on the circuit court, while Jennifer Michelle Alexander will replace John P. McKenna Jr. on the district court.

“Anne Arundel County has gained two exceptional legal minds who will undoubtedly make meaningful and lasting impacts in the county and in the State of Maryland,” Moore said in a statement.

Jackson-Stevenson’s name was forwarded to the governor along with five other nominees chosen by a local Judicial Nominating Commission from an applicant pool of nine. Alexander’s name and three others were sent to the governor from an 11-person applicant pool.

On the campaign trail in 2022, Moore promised to prioritize diversity in his judicial appointments. So far, all four appointments he has made have been women, and two have been women of color.

“We are going to have a judiciary just like the administration that looks like the state of Maryland, and we’ll ensure that qualified judges — qualified African American women, qualified African American men, qualified people of color — are getting out there, sharing in this process and sitting in these seats,” Moore said at a campaign event in September 2022 in Annapolis.

For Jackson-Stevenson, the role is an opportunity to use what she’s learned as a criminal defense attorney for the Office of the Public Defender and a private attorney.

In her solo practice, she’s argued criminal and personal injury cases and worked on family law and police misconduct issues.

Over the past three years, she’s helped adjudicate family law cases within the circuit court as a magistrate, a role similar to a judge but with more limitations and assigned to one division.

“My goal is just to make sure that when people come into the courtroom that they’re heard, despite what the ruling may be,” Jackson-Stevenson said, adding she wants all parties leaving her courtroom thinking: “‘She may not have agreed with what I said, but at least I know she heard my argument.’”

Circuit court judges, of which there are 13 in Anne Arundel, hear criminal cases from misdemeanors to felonies, as well as all types of civil and family law cases including divorces, custody disputes, and child support cases.

This is not Jackson-Stevenson’s first go at a judgeship. She’s applied for a position for most years since 2015.

“Each step has laid a firmer foundation to make me a better jurist,” she said.

What set Jackson-Stevenson apart in her interview with Moore, she believes, was her devotion to the community outside of the courtroom as well as in it.

Over the past roughly 20 years, she’s volunteered for various organizations in different roles.

She got her law degree from the University of Baltimore School of Law and attended the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for her undergraduate degree.

Alexander, a principal attorney for McNamee Hosea since 2019, according to the firm’s website, will be one of 10 judges in Anne Arundel’s district court system, which hears landlord-tenant disputes, motor vehicle violations, misdemeanors, and some felonies.

Much of her experience has involved defending businesses, retailers, and insurance companies throughout the state. She’s argued cases involving issues of liability, insurance payments, and personal injury.

After graduating from Notre Dame of Maryland University and getting her law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law, Alexander started as a trial lawyer in the Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney’s Office, spending six years as an assistant state’s attorney.

In that time, she helped prosecute violent crimes. She worked on a high-profile 2006 case involving Javaughn Adams, a then-teenager who shot a peer at Westfield Annapolis Mall over a neighborhood dispute, as well as an off-duty Secret Service agent who attempted to break up the fight.

She also was involved in the 2007 case of Ambrose Rawls, who broke into a Severna Park home, beating a woman inside with his gun and demanding money while an accomplice shot another man in the home in the chest and hand. Soon after police found evidence of dogfighting and illegal drug dealing on the premises.

Alexander and her rescue dog Mac were a sworn Courthouse Dog therapy team in the county’s circuit court, spending more than six years together working with child witnesses to assuage their fears before they testified.