The judges — Gull, Davis and Surbeck; Lee and Brady in the federal court

1970–2026 · THE COURTHOUSE SERVANTS

Frances Gull: Allen Superior Court's criminal division has been Frances C. Gull's courtroom since 1997. She came to the bench from the prosecutor's office, where she had been chief counsel in the criminal division and a deputy prosecuting attorney in the sex crimes unit; she has been re-elected four times, served more than twenty years as the criminal division's administrative judge, and took a two-year term as the Superior Court's chief judge on 1 January 2024. In November 2022 the Indiana Supreme Court appointed her special judge in the Delphi murders case in Carroll County, and in 2024 she presided over the trial of Richard Allen — the most watched proceeding ever handed to a Fort Wayne judge, tried before a jury drawn from her own county. In November 2026 she announced she would retire at the year's end, closing a twenty-nine-year tenure on the bench.

Wendy Davis: Wendy W. Davis, an Allen County native, came home from prosecuting violent offenders and gang members as an assistant district attorney in San Antonio to partnership at a Fort Wayne firm and part-time work as a deputy prosecutor, ran for judge in 2010, and took the Superior Court bench in January 2011. Her colleagues elected her chief judge for 2014–15; she brought the HOPE Probation program to the court, chaired the Indiana Judicial Probation Committee by appointment of the Supreme Court, and served on the governor's drug task force. In 2020 she was elected to the Allen Circuit Court and sworn in on 1 January 2021 — the first woman to hold the circuit judgeship in the county's history, the last of the county's great courtrooms to be held by a woman. In March 2019 the Superior Court she had left reached a milestone of its own: for the first time, five of its nine judges were women.

John Surbeck: John F. Surbeck Jr. served thirty years on the Allen Superior Court bench, retiring on 31 December 2018. His monument is institutional: the Allen Superior Re-Entry Court, the problem-solving court that manages offenders returning from prison, began operating with Surbeck presiding, and his successor David Zent took it over with the seat. Three decades on one bench, outlasting six mayors, is its own kind of public service, and Surbeck's is the county bench's modern measure of it.

The federal servants: Fort Wayne's federal courthouse — the E. Ross Adair Federal Building, named for the district's twenty-year congressman — has been served by two Fort Wayne natives in succession at the top of the district. William C. Lee, born here 2 February 1938 and a North Side High School graduate of 1955, was named United States Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana at thirty-one, serving March 1970 to May 1973; in July 1981 President Reagan made him his first appointee to the federal bench, and he sat in Fort Wayne for more than forty years, chief judge of the district 1997–2003, dying in office as a senior judge on 20 January 2024, aged eighty-five. Holly A. Brady, born in Fort Wayne in 1969 and in private practice here from 1994, was confirmed on 10 April 2019 as only the second woman ever to sit on the Northern District's bench, and became the district's chief judge on 17 July 2023. The city court's own judges — the minor bench that sat in the City Building from 1901 until the court's abolition in 1971 — are treated with the clerk's desk above: Skelton, Mungovan and Douglass are documented to 1923 and Wayne Miller at 1946, and the succession of 1924–71, including the final judge, still awaits Donald Doxsee's history of the Allen County bar and courts at the public library.

Sources:

1. Gannett/Indianapolis Star, "What to know about Judge Frances Gull," April 2024, and Allen Superior Court biography — Gull's 1997 start, prosecutor's-office career, chief judgeship; WTHR, November 2026 — the announced retirement.
2. Allen County Community Corrections timeline (allencounty.in.gov) — Surbeck's thirty years and retirement, the Re-Entry Court, Felts and Davis successions. WANE, 11 March 2019 — the first majority-female Superior Court bench. NIHRA and Around Fort Wayne biographies — Davis's bench dates, chief judgeship and programs.
3. The Indiana Lawyer, January 2024 — Lee's death, career and chief judgeship; University of Chicago Law School, 2024 — Lee's Fort Wayne birth and schooling. Federal Judicial Center, Biographical Directory — Brady's birth, nomination and confirmation; U.S. District Court, Northern District of Indiana, release of 17 July 2023 — Brady's chief judgeship.