Justice Brian Hoffstadt Presiding Justice of California’s Second District Court of Appeal

Justice Brian M. Hoffstadt, of Los Angeles County is the  Presiding Justice of the Second District Court of Appeal, Division Five. He was appointed to that position after serving  as an Associate Justice in  Division Two since 2014. He filled the vacancy created by the retirement of Presiding Justice Laurence D. Rubin

Justice Hoffstadt is a third-generation Southern Californian. He grew up in the eastern San Gabriel Valley, and attended public schools from kindergarten through law school. In 1992, he graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in business administration. Three years later, he graduated first in his class from the UCLA School of Law.

He was a law clerk for the Honorable Cynthia H. Hall at the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit from 1995 to 1996 and for the Honorable Sandra Day O’Connor at the U.S. Supreme Court from 1996 to 1997.

He served in the  Federal Communications Commission Office of General Counsel from 1997 to 1998. and was a  Senior Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Policy Development from 1998 to 2000 and at the

He then  returned to Los Angeles, and joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office as a criminal prosecutor where,  from 2000 to 2007, he investigated.  charged, and tried criminal cases  ranging from white-collar fraud and international extortion to computer hacking and trademark infringement. He also served in the Criminal Appeals section, where he regularly appeared  before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

He  entered private practice as a partner at Jones Day in 2007  where he briefed and argued complex trial court motions in civil cases, and briefed and argued civil appeals and writs before the California and federal appellate courts.

He was appointed to the  Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2010 and served until 2014 .

Justice Hoffstadt has devoted many years to teaching. He has taught as an adjunct professor at USC Gould School of Law, Loyola Law School, and The George Washington University Law School.

He  has also written extensively. He has authored or co-authored two books:  California Criminal Discovery (5th ed. 2015, 6th ed. 2020, 7th ed. forthcoming), and Evidence Law:  Practice, Problems, and Policy (1st ed. 2023) (co-authored with Professor Laurie Levenson). He has written nearly 100 columns for the Los Angeles Daily Journal.  He has published articles in the UCLA Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Texas Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, and Southern California Law Review. He was elected to the American Law Institute in 2018, and serves as an Advisor on the Restatement (Third) of the Law of Torts: Defamation and Privacy.

He has been a faculty member of the California Judicial College since 2012. He chaired the 2017 Appellate Judges Education Institute Summit, and served on its Board of Directors and on the Executive Committee of the Appellate Judges Conference of the American Bar Association’s Judicial Division. He chaired the 2023 Appellate Justices Institute for California appellate judges.

Justice Hoffstadt is married to a public middle-school English teacher. They have two school-aged children.