SANTA FE – Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Thursday appointed four New Mexicans to fill new judicial positions created by the Legislature:

• Kathleen McGarry Ellenwood to the First Judicial District Court serving Santa Fe, Rio Arriba and Los Alamos counties;
• Lucy Boyadjian Solimon to the Second Judicial District Court serving Bernalillo County;
• Clara Marissa Moran to the Second Judicial District Court;
• Casey Bruce Fitch to the Third Judicial District Court serving Doña Ana County.

Ellenwood was in private practice until 2018, when she joined the First Judicial District Court as an attorney associate, assisting all the judges with case-related work, particularly in civil cases. She is an Ohio native who has lived in Glorieta, since 2001 and was admitted to the New Mexico Bar in 2002.

Solimon has been enforcement bureau chief for the New Mexico Workers Compensation Administration since 2018. Immediately before that, she was a special assistant U.S. attorney for Laguna Pueblo. Solimon was born in Lebanon to Armenian parents and emigrated with them to the United States when she was 6. She was the first member of her family to go to college, and she graduated from the University of New Mexico School of Law in 2007, the same year she was admitted to the New Mexico Bar. She has lived in Albuquerque since 2003.

Moran has worked in the office of the New Mexico attorney general since 2015, most recently as  chief deputy for criminal cases. She spent 10 years before that in the Office of the Second Judicial District Attorney in various capacities. Moran is an Albuquerque native and a 2005 graduate of the University of New Mexico School of Law.

Fitch left private practice in 2017 to join the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico as a career law clerk. He is an Albuquerque native and a 2003 law graduate of Seattle University. He moved back to New Mexico in 2010 after stints in Michigan and Washington state.

The governor signed legislation in March creating five new state District Court judgeships in the four judicial districts with the highest need. She has yet to fill the fifth new judgeship  serving the 12th Judicial District, made up of Lincoln and Otero Counties.