Gov. Gavin Newsom has nominated two local superior court judges to become associate justices on the San Diego-based appeals court, and he has also appointed two court commissioners to fill the open seats of retiring superior court judges.
Nominated to the 4th District Court of Appeal, Division 1 are San Diego Superior Court judges Marsha Amin and Lisa Rodriguez. Amin would fill the seat of longtime Associate Justice Joan Irion, who died in June following an illness.
Rodriguez’s nomination to the appellate court would fill the seat of Justice Terry B. O’Rourke, who is retiring when his term ends Jan. 4, according to the governor’s office.
Filling vacant seats at San Diego Superior Court are commissioners Crystal Salumbides and Brigid Campo. When she is sworn in this week, Salumbides will fill the seat of Judge Joel Wohlfeil, who retired in March. Campo, who was sworn in Monday, took the seat left open with the April retirement of Judge Daniel Lamborn.
Crystal Salumbides is slated to be sworn in as a San Diego Superior Court judge this week.
The positions on the appellate court require confirmation by the Commission on Judicial Appointments. The commission — made up of Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, Attorney General Rob Bonta and Senior Presiding Justice Manuel Ramirez — will consider the nominations of Amin and Rodriguez at an Aug. 20 hearing in San Francisco.
Because Rodriguez was nominated to a seat with a term that expires this January, her name will appear on the ballot for the upcoming November election, as laid out in the state Constitution. The question to voters will be whether or not she should be elected to the appellate seat.
Amin has been a San Diego Superior Court judge since 2023, but the halls of the 4th District will be familiar to her — she was a staff attorney there for more than a decade. Amin served as senior attorney from 2011 to 2018, then became managing attorney until she departed to take a seat on the bench.
Amin earned her law degree at the University of San Diego School of Law. She worked as a law clerk for the San Diego federal court from 2005 to 2006 before leaving to be a litigator at Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch until 2010. Procopio posted a statement Monday congratulating Amin on her nomination to the appellate court, saying the nod was “the latest honor for an attorney who has been a dedicated public servant for many years.”
Rodriguez has been a San Diego Superior Court judge since 2015 and an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego School of Law since 2014 — the same school from which she earned her law degree.
Rodriguez served as a deputy city attorney in San Diego from 1996 to 1998, then went to work as a deputy district attorney at the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office from 1998 to 2015. Rodriguez is married to San Diego County Public Defender Paul Rodriguez. (As a judge, she disqualifies herself from cases in which the Public Defender’s Office is involved.)
Salumbides, before her appointment as a San Diego Superior Court judge, became a superior court commissioner in 2025. She earned her law degree from the Thomas Jefferson School of Law and worked as a deputy public defender at the San Diego County Public Defender’s Office from 2013 to 2025.
San Diego Superior Court Judge Brigid Campo (Courtesy of the Office of Gov. Gavin Newsom.)
Campo was also a court commissioner, stepping into that job in 2023.
Campo earned her law degree from Santa Barbara College of Law, then worked as a Deputy District Attorney at the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office in 2011. That same year, she hung out a shingle as a sole practitioner, and, in 2014, she became an associate at the Law and Mediation Offices of Klueck & Hoppes.
She served as Of Counsel at Ashworth, Blanchet & Christenson in 2018 and 2019, then spent roughly the next four years as a research attorney at San Diego Superior Court. In 2023, she worked as an administrative law judge for the state’s Department of Social Services.
According to the governor’s office, all four women — Amin, Rodriguez, Salumbides and Campo — are Democrats.
The annual salary for an appellate court justice is $280,052, and they serve 12-year terms. Annual compensation for superior judges in California is $244,727, and they serve six-year terms.