Brian M. Hoffstadt

Justice Hoffstadt has served on the Court of Appeal since August 2014. He served as an Associate Justice in Division Two for ten years, and began serving as the Presiding Justice of Division Five in 2024.

Justice Hoffstadt is a third-generation Southern Californian. He grew up in the eastern San Gabriel Valley, and attended public schools from kindergarten through law school. In 1992, he graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in business administration. Three years later, he graduated first in his class from UCLA School of Law.

Following law school, Justice Hoffstadt spent two years as a law clerk—first for the late Ninth Circuit Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall, and then for the late Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. For the next three years, he held legal policy posts at the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Policy Development, both in Washington, D.C.

Justice Hoffstadt returned to Los Angeles, and joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office as a criminal prosecutor. He spent the next six years investigating, charging, and trying criminal cases involving everything from white-collar fraud and international extortion to computer hacking and trademark infringement. He also served in the Criminal Appeals section, where he regularly briefed and argued appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

He then entered private practice as a partner at Jones Day. For the next three and a half years, he helped run the Issues & Appeals practice group in the law firm’s Los Angeles office. In that capacity, he briefed and argued complex trial court motions in civil cases, and briefed and argued civil appeals and writs before the California and federal appellate courts.

His judicial nominations have come from Governors of both major political parties.  He was appointed to the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2010 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and then spent the next four years presiding over criminal and civil calendars, including 50 trials. He was appointed to Division Two by Governor Jerry Brown, and appointed as the Presiding Justice of Division Five by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Justice Hoffstadt has devoted many years to teaching. He has taught as an adjunct professor at USC Gould School of Law, Loyola Law School, and The George Washington University Law School. He currently teaches Evidence at USC Gould School of Law. He has also taught judicial education courses all over the State of California on evidence, habeas corpus, domestic violence law, arbitration, civil jury instructions and verdicts, and criminal law. He has been a faculty member of the Judicial College since 2012. He chaired the 2017 Appellate Judges Education Institute Summit, and served on its Board of Directors and on the Executive Committee of the Appellate Judges Conference of the American Bar Association’s Judicial Division. He chaired the 2023 Appellate Justices Institute for California appellate judges.

Justice Hoffstadt has also written extensively. He has authored or co-authored two books:  California Criminal Discovery (5th ed. 2015, 6th ed. 2020, 7th ed. forthcoming), and Evidence Law:  Practice, Problems, and Policy (1st ed. 2023) (co-authored with Professor Laurie Levenson). He has written nearly 100 columns for the Daily Journal.  He has published articles in the UCLA Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Texas Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, and Southern California Law Review. He was elected to the American Law Institute in 2018, and serves as an Advisor on the Restatement (Third) of the Law of Torts: Defamation and Privacy.

Justice Hoffstadt is married to a public middle-school English teacher. They have two school-aged children.