Judge, 250th District Court (Travis County)

Cory Liu is the judge of the 250th District Court in Travis County, appointed by Governor Greg Abbott in March 2025³⁴. He is the Republican nominee for Chief Justice of the Third Court of Appeals and faces incumbent Chief Justice Darlene Byrne¹. He is not the incumbent in this race, and he had no primary opponent². The State Commission on Judicial Conduct's public sanctions pages for fiscal years 2002 through 2026 list no sanction for him⁵.

• Judge, 250th District Court (Travis County), presiding since April 30, 2025⁴
• Attorney at Butler Snow LLP before his appointment; clerked for Judge Andrew Oldham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Judge Danny Boggs of the Sixth Circuit³
• President of the Federalist Society's Austin Lawyers Chapter and a steering committee member of the Texas Review of Law and Politics, per the Governor's announcement³
• B.A. in political science, University of Chicago; J.D., Harvard Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy³
• Appointed to the 250th District Court by Governor Greg Abbott on March 5, 2025, for a term set to expire December 31, 2026³; he began presiding April 30, 2025⁴. He had no primary opponent for Chief Justice².
• Public discipline: Searched the State Commission on Judicial Conduct public sanctions pages for fiscal years 2002 through 2026 (every year the site lists) on 2026-10-02, by surname; no public sanction naming this candidate was found. The FY2026 page covers only sanctions published through that date. Private sanctions are not published by name, and the Commission's separate suspension and resignation lists were searched by surname with no match.⁵