The Hon.
Samuel
A.
Thumma
Samuel A. Thumma has served as a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One, in Phoenix since 2012, serving as Chief Judge (2017-2019) and Vice Chief Judge (2015-2017). Before that, he served for five years as a trial judge (criminal and juvenile rotations) on the Arizona Superior Court in Maricopa County. Before joining the bench, he was an AV Peer Review Rated Lawyer and a partner at Perkins Coie/Brown & Bain, P.A., in Phoenix, and an associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. He served as a law clerk for Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Stanley G. Feldman and Judge David R. Hansen, United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.
Sam has served as an Adviser to the Restatement of the Law (Third) of Torts: Lability for Economic Harm and the Restatement of the Law (Third) of Torts: Remedies. Sam is Secretary of the National Judicial College Board of Trustees, previously having served as faculty on various NJC programs. He is a Uniform Law Commissioner from Arizona, where he chairs the Joint Editorial Board on Civil Litigation and Dispute Resolution, has served as Secretary of the Executive Committee and member of the Scope and Program Committee and serves or has served on various Study, Drafting and other Committees.
In Arizona, Sam chairs the Arizona Commission on Access to Justice, is a member of the Arizona Supreme Court Steering Committee on Artificial Intelligence and on the Task Force on Rules of the Arizona Supreme Court and co-teaches evidence at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. He has presented at more than 600 law-related seminars and has published 24 law review articles and nearly 80 other law-related articles or book chapters.
In 2026, Sam received the Walter E. Craig Distinguish Service Award from the Arizona Bar Foundation. In 2025, he received the Chief Justice Richard W. Holmes Award of Merit from the American Judges Association. In 2023, he received the James A. Walsh Outstanding Jurist Award from the State Bar of Arizona. And in 2021, he was named Judge of the Year by the Arizona Supreme Court.