1999 – Present
Presiding Judge Anne Elizabeth Barnes won an open election in 1998 to the Georgia Court of Appeals in a three-way race without a runoff, and took office January 1, 1999. She was the first woman to be elected in a state-wide judicial race without having been first appointed to the bench, and was re-elected, without opposition, in 2004. She was elected to a third term in 2010, and received more votes than any other candidate in the state of Georgia. Presiding Judge Barnes has since been elected to a fourth term in 2016, and a fifth term in 2022. She attended DeKalb County public schools, and received her bachelor’s degree from Georgia State University, graduating magna cum laude in 1979. She earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Georgia in 1983, a Master of Laws in the Judicial Process from the University of Virginia in 2004, and a Master of Laws in Judicial Studies from Duke University in 2020. Presiding Judge Barnes has served on various commissions and committees, including the Judicial Council of Georgia’s Standing Committee on Policy and its Budget Committee, the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism, the Supreme Court Commission on Interpreters, the Domestic Violence Committee of the Judicial Council of Georgia and the Georgia Commission on Child Support.
Presiding Judge Barnes has also served as a Director on the Boards of Georgia Court Appointed Special Advocates (GACASA), the Truancy Intervention Project, the National Courts and Science Institute, and the Advisory Board to the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies Judicial Education Project. Judge Barnes is a Trustee of the Georgia Legal History Foundation. She is a member of the American Bar Association, the State Bar of Georgia, the Atlanta, DeKalb, and Gate City Bar Associations, the Lawyers Club of Atlanta, and the Old Warhorse Lawyers Club. She is a Master of the Bleckley Inn of Court, and member and former District 5 Director of the National Association of Women Judges. Judge Barnes is a Fellow of the Lawyers Foundation of Georgia and of the American Bar Association.
In 2012 Judge Barnes received the Romae Turner Powell Judicial Service Award from the Atlanta Bar Association Judicial Section and she is a former chair of that section. She has been twice recognized by the Barbados Association of Atlanta, receiving their Trident and Community Service Awards. Presiding Judge Barnes has also been recognized for her service by the DeKalb Bar Association, the Women in the Profession Committee of the Atlanta Bar Association, the Young Lawyers Division of the State Bar of Georgia, and Justice Served. Presiding Judge Barnes is a 2006 graduate of Leadership Atlanta.
A native Georgian, Judge Barnes grew up in Chamblee and currently lives in Virginia Highlands.