Joseph Albright
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Joseph P. Albright was elected to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in November 2000 for a twelve-year term. He was elected as a Democrat in a partisan election.
Legal education
Justice Albright earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree, cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame and his law degree from the Notre Dame Law School.
Legal experience
A former assistant prosecuting attorney of Wood County and former city attorney for the City of Parkersburg, Justice Albright was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1970 and to six more terms commencing in 1974. He served as Chairman of the House Education Committee (1977-78), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (1979-84), and as 52nd Speaker of the House of Delegates in 1985 and 1986.
Justice Albright has also served on a number of public and quasi-public boards and commissions, including the Parkersburg Charter Board from 1969-1970. Justice Albright practiced law in the Parkersburg area from 1962 until September 1995. In September 1995, then-Governor Gaston Caperton appointed him to the Supreme Court of Appeals. He served through December 1996. After his former service on the Court, he resumed his law practice in Parkersburg and Charleston.
Awards and associations
At Notre Dame Law School, he won the Webber Prize for Appellate Advocacy and was a member of the Notre Dame Law Review.
Campaign contributions
Personal injury lawyers make up Justice Albright's largest source of campaign contributions.[1]
On personal responsibility
In the The West Virginia Lawyer, Justice Albright applauded “drug court programs”—voluntary programs for nonviolent criminal defendants. These programs involve judicial supervision, mandatory drug testing, community rehabilitation services, education, employment, and housing for certain criminals. In West Virginia, the magistrate and circuit courts of Brooke, Hancock, Ohio, Marshall, and Wetzel counties sponsor the program. Albright says the following about drug court programs: “The national drug court movement is not only a phenomenon of our criminal justice system but of our system of social justice. I commend our Northern Panhandle circuit and magistrate courts for initiating this West Virginia experiment with restorative and therapeutic justice and serving as West Virginia's first adult drug court model.” [2]
