2020-2021 Board of Directors
Hon. Benjamin T Reyes II, Contra Costa County (Chair)
Current CAPAJA-PAC Chair Hon. Benjamin Reyes was appointed to the Superior Court in 2017 by Governor Jerry Brown. He is the first Filipino American judge in Contra Costa County and only the second Filipino American Superior Court Judge in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is assigned to Contra Costa County and is currently serving in the Family Law Division after completing a criminal law rotation. Prior to his appointment, Judge Reyes was an equity partner at the statewide public agency law firm, Meyers Nave. He managed a city attorney and public agency practice and chaired the firm's public contract and construction practice group. Judge Reyes received his J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law and his Bachelor's degree from the University of California Berkeley.
Hon. Michael E. Whitaker, Los Angeles County (Secretary)
Hon. Michael E. Whitaker (CAPAJA-PAC Secretary) is a Judge of the Superior Court of California in and for the County of Los Angeles currently assigned to the Civil Law Division of the Superior Court. Prior to his appointment in 2014, Judge Whitaker served as a Supervising Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of the Attorney General, in Los Angeles from 1998 through 2015. Before joining the DOJ, Judge Whitaker was an Associate at Bronson, Bronson & McKinnon in San Francisco, and served as Staff Counsel with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Judge Whitaker received his B.A., with Distinction, in Political Science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He obtained his J.D. from the University of Oregon School of Law.
Hon. Tony Cho, Los Angeles County
Judge Cho became a Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge in January 2019, and is currently assigned to a criminal trial court in the Torrance Courthouse. He was previously the Assistant Site Judge in the El Monte Courthouse where he also presided over a criminal calendar court. Prior to becoming a judge, Judge Cho served as a Deputy District Attorney with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for 13 years, and before that, worked as in-house counsel for Tokio Marine Nichida & Fire Insurance Company. Judge Cho is on the Executive Board of the California Lawyers Association’s Criminal Law Section. He graduated from the University of California, Irvine, and received his J.D. from the George Washington University School of Law.
Hon. Christopher Frisco, Los Angeles County
Judge Frisco was elected to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2014 and won without opposition. He was reelected in 2020 and currently sits in a criminal department in Long Beach. Judge Frisco was a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney for almost 26 years and tried approximately 200 jury trials to verdict. Among these cases were special circumstance murders, high profile sex crimes, and other violent felony offenses. Judge Frisco was elected and served as president of the Italian American Lawyers Association from 2001 to 2002. Judge Frisco earned his undergraduate degree from Pitzer College, a member of the Claremont Colleges and his J.D. from Southwestern University School of Law.
Hon. Dennis Hayashi, Alameda County
Hon. Dennis Hayashi was elected in November 2008 to serve as Judge of the Superior Court for Alameda County. Dennis has served as a member and Presiding Judge of the Alameda County Superior Court Appellate Panel from 2013-2016, and as a member of the Court’s Executive Committee. Dennis has also served on several California Judicial Council committees, including the Access and Fairness Advisory Committee, the Joint Working Group for California’s Language Access Plan, the California Judicial Council Language Access Plan Implementation Task Force, and the Bench Bar Coalition. In 2011 and 2016, Dennis served on the working group convening summits on Diversity in the Judiciary, held in conjunction with the California Judges Association.
Hon. Victor Hwang, San Francisco County
Hon. Victor Hwang was elected to the San Francisco Superior Court in November 2016. Prior to becoming a judge, Victor worked as a public defender in Los Angeles, as a civil rights attorney for the Asian Law Caucus, as deputy director of API Legal Outreach, and as a district attorney in San Francisco focusing on hate crimes and human trafficking cases. Victor is currently assigned to the Family Law Division of the San Francisco Superior Court and has previously completed assignments in Traffic, Preliminary Hearings, and Criminal Trials.
Hon. Lance Ito, Los Angeles County (ret.)
Lance Ito was born in Los Angeles, California to James and Toshiko Ito who met while unlawfully incarcerated at the concentration camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Ito took his education with the Los Angeles Unified School District, earned his BA at UCLA and his JD at UC Berkeley. Ito’s legal experience as a lawyer includes civil litigation, gang homicide and serial murder prosecutions, and as a judge presiding over traffic, master calendar and complex long cause criminal matters. Ito was instrumental in the transition of spoken language interpreter services to a statewide system.
Hon. Esther Kim, Los Angeles County
Judge Esther P. Kim was appointed to the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2019 by Governor Gavin Newsom, and presides over a family law calendar in the Compton Courthouse. She was a Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General. Judge Kim is the Chair of the State Bar of California, Council on Access and Fairness, and serves on the LASC Community Outreach and Diversity Committee. She also serves on the California Judges Association in their Outreach Committee.
Hon. Andrew Liu, Monterey County
Judge Andrew Liu was elected to the Superior Court of Monterey County in 2014. He is currently serving in the Family Law Division and the Appellate Division after spending his first years presiding over a felony trial department in the Criminal Division. Previously, Judge Liu was in private practice handling exclusively criminal defense matters, and prior to that he served as a prosecutor in Monterey County and in Bronx County, New York. As a Monterey County prosecutor Judge Liu was assigned to the Major Felony Unit, and as a Bronx prosecutor he was the Deputy Bureau Chief of the Domestic Violence Bureau. Judge Liu received his J.D. from the Boston University School of Law and his Bachelor's degree from the University of California Los Angeles.
Hon. Teresa Magno, Los Angeles County
Judge Teresa P. Magno is a former president of CAPAJA, and is one of the founding board members of CAPAJA-PAC. In 2014, Judge Magno was elected to the Los Angeles Superior Court, and became not only the first Filipino American to be elected to the bench but also the first Filipino American to successfully run in a Los Angeles county wide race. Prior to being elected, she served as a Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney for 15 years. As a deputy district attorney, she served in several elite units including the Hardcore Gang Division, where she prosecuted exclusively gang homicide cases. She has a criminal law assignment and is assigned to the Compton Courthouse. Judge Magno received her bachelor’s and Juris Doctorate degrees from UCLA.
Hon. Kirk Nakamura, Orange County
The Honorable Kirk H. Nakamura is a founding board member of CAPAJA-PAC. A well respected jurist, Judge Nakamura was appointed to the Orange County Superior Court in 2001 by Governor Gray Davis. He recently completed his term as the Court's Presiding Judge. Prior to his appointment, Judge Nakamura served as a partner at Beam, DiCaro and its successor firms. Judge Nakamura has over 20 years of experience in all aspects of complex civil litigation. He handled complex multiple party construction cases, insurance coverage and bad faith litigation. Judge Nakamura earned his undergraduate degree at the University of California at Irvine and his Juris Doctor at Duke University School of Law.
Hon. Susan Jung Townsend, Los Angeles County
Hon. Susan Jung Townsend was elected to the Los Angeles County Superior Court on November 8, 2016. Before her election, Judge Townsend served 18 years as a prosecutor for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, where her last assignment was to the Bureau of Fraud and Corruption. Judge Townsend is an active member of the Korean American community, the Korean Prosecutors Association, the National Asian Pacific Islander Prosecution Association. A native of Los Angeles, Judge Townsend received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Los Angeles and her J.D., with honors, from Loyola Law School.