2024-2025 Board of Directors
Hon. Teresa Magno, Los Angeles County (Chair)
Current CAPAJA-PAC Chair 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. Linda Sun, Los Angeles County (Secretary)
Hon. Linda Liu-Sun is a Judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court. She was elected to this position in 2020 and assigned to the Dependency Court where she presides today. Previously, she was a supervising deputy attorney general at the Office of the Attorney General, California Department of Justice.
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. 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. 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. Ann Park, Los Angeles County
Judge Ann H. Park was elected to the Los Angeles Superior Court in June 2014 and took the bench in January 2015, making history as the first Korean American to win a county-wide election in Los Angeles. Prior to joining the bench, she served as a Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney for 20 years, specializing in appellate work, habeas corpus, and victim advocacy, particularly in cases involving sexual assault and domestic violence. She founded and served as President of the Korean Prosecutors Association. She currently presides over civil trials at the Norwalk Courthouse. Judge Park is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and U.C.S.FS. - Hastings College of the Law,
Hon. Pelayo A. Llamas, Jr., Alameda County
Judge Llamas is the first Filipino-American judicial officer to serve in Alameda County. He elected to serve as a Judge in the 2022 Primary Election, but then received an interim appointment from Governor Newsom in August 2022. He is currently assigned to criminal jury trials and is the Supervising Judge for traffic and infraction courtrooms. Judge Llamas served as a Commissioner since 1999. He served as a Deputy City Attorney for Oakland for 19 years, preceded by years of civil litigation practice. He is a past president of the Earl Warren American Inn of Court, an advisory Board member of the Filipino Bar Association of Northern California, and was president-elect of the Alameda County Bar Association. He received his J.D. from Santa Clara University, and his A.B. from the University of California, Berkeley.