Roger DeHoog has been elevated from the Oregon Court of Appeals to the Oregon Supreme Court.

Gov. Kate Brown announced DeHoog’s appointment, along with three new judges on the Oregon Court of Appeals, on Wednesday.

DeHoog will succeed Lynn Nakamoto, who retired Dec. 31 after six years in Position 6 on the state’s highest court. Like Nakamoto, DeHoog is Asian American, and will be only the second in the history of Oregon’s appellate courts.

Judge Ramón Pagán of Washington County Circuit Court was named to DeHoog’s Position 8 on the Court of Appeals.

Kristina Hellman, a lawyer with the federal public defender in Portland, was named to Position 10. The seat was vacated Dec. 31 upon the retirement of Judge Rex Armstrong, who served a record 27 years on the Court of Appeals.

Anna Joyce, a lawyer with the Portland firm of Markowitz Herbold and a former state solicitor general, was named to Position 11. The seat was vacated Dec. 31 upon the retirement of Judge Joel DeVore, who retired after having served since 2013. DeVore was one of three new judges appointed when the court expanded from 10 to 13 judges in 2013.

The appointments take effect immediately. All the appointees will have to run this year for full six-year terms in the nonpartisan positions.

“Each of these highly qualified individuals brings a skill set and perspective informed by years of legal experience,” Brown said in her announcement. “I am grateful to this talented, diverse group of judges and lawyers, for stepping up to serve our state and administering justice on behalf of the people of Oregon.”

Backgrounds on the new appointees:

Roger DeHoog

Before he was appointed to the Court of Appeals in 2015, he was a Deschutes Court circuit judge for three years. He spent much of career in Bend, where he was a deputy public defender in Deschutes County from 1993 to 2000, and in private practice from 2000 to 2007, handling criminal and domestic relations cases. In 2008 he joined the Oregon Department of Justice in its special litigation unit, and dealt with major cases in environmental, constitutional and consumer protection laws.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1987 from Dartmouth College and his law degree in 1992 from the University of Oregon. He is the only current member of the appellate courts from outside the Willamette Valley.

Ramón Pagán

He has been a Washington County circuit judge since 2016 and led the family-law bench since 2018. He was in private practice as a criminal defense lawyer, and was an associate at the Portland firm of Janet Hoffman & Associates, from 2004 to 2016. As a law student, Pagan was a law clerk for Sonia Sotomayor, then a judge of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, and today a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Pagán earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1997 from Arizona State University and his law degree in 2000 from Fordham University in New York. He has taught trial advocacy at Lewis & Clark College law school and Fordham University.

Kristina Hellman

She has been with the federal public defender in Portland since 2002, and is a supervising attorney. She represents clients in federal cases where they are challenging their Oregon criminal convictions on federal constitutional grounds.

Hellman earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and her law degree in 2000 from Georgetown University. She was a law clerk for Judge Edward Reed in U.S. District Court in Nevada before she came to Oregon.

Anna Joyce

She is regarded as one of Oregon’s top appellate lawyers. She worked in the appellate division of the Oregon Department of Justice from 2003 to 2015 — and from 2012 to 2015, she was solicitor general, the official who represents the state in state and federal appellate court proceedings. She joined the Portland firm of Markowitz Herbold in 2015; in one of her most recent cases, she argued to the Oregon Supreme Court on behalf of the Legislature, which sought (and won) more time to prepare legislative and congressional redistricting maps after the delayed release of federal census block data required to draw the maps.

Joyce earned a bachelor’s degree in 1996 and her law degree in 2001, both from the University of Oregon. She was a law clerk for then Judge Rives Kistler, later elevated to the Supreme Court, on the Oregon Court of Appeals. She completed a certificate in public management in 1998 from Willamette University.