Home > AZ Courts > Presiding Judges > Navajo
Judge Dale Nielson
Dale P. Nielson was born in 1960 in Winslow, Arizona. At the time, his father was running the Sunrise Trading Post in Leupp, Arizona, which is on the Navajo Indian reservation. He lived on the Navajo and Hopi Indian reservations until he was five, when his family moved to Holbrook, Arizona. He completed school in Holbrook in 1978. He was active in sports including football, basketball and baseball.
In 1979, he began a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Idaho. Following the completion of his mission, he began his college education at Brigham Young University and obtained his B.A. degree in Political Science in 1984. In 1985, he returned to Winslow, Arizona, and worked as a Juvenile Probation Officer until August of 1986. At that time, he enrolled in law school at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. After one year, he transferred to the University of Arizona, where he completed his law degree in 1989.
In October of 1989, he began working as a Deputy County Attorney in the Navajo County Attorney’s Office. He worked as a prosecutor for three and a half years, until 1993. In 1993, he became the Navajo County Legal Defender, a position he held for seven and a half years, until being elected to the Navajo County Superior Court for the term beginning in January 2001.