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Judge Joseph Welty
The Honorable Joseph C. Welty is the Presiding Judge of the Judicial Branch in Maricopa County. He has supervisory authority over the Superior Court and Adult and Juvenile Probation departments and oversite authority over all lower courts in Maricopa County. Judge Welty was appointed to the bench in 2007 and has served in the civil, criminal, family and juvenile departments of the Superior Court.
Prior to becoming a judge, he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona for 16 years, where he served as the Deputy Chief of the Criminal Section and the Chief of the National Security Section. Judge Welty was an adjunct professor at ASU and has taught extensively on a broad range of topics for the U.S. Department of Justice and the State Bar of Arizona, and for several years co-chaired the New Judge Orientation Program for the Arizona Supreme Court. He has served on numerous Supreme Court Committees and chaired the Supreme Court’s Criminal Rules Task Force and the Task Force on Rule 32 of the Arizona Rules of Criminal Procedure.
Judge Welty was born and raised in Phoenix. He received his BA from Loyola Marymount University and his JD from the Georgetown University Law Center.