Justice Hood was sworn in as a member of the Colorado Supreme Court on January 13, 2014, following seven years as a judge on the Denver District Court. In 2014, the Colorado Chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers gave him its Distinguished Jurist Award. In 2011, he received the Denver Bar Association’s (DBA’s) Judicial Excellence Award.
Before moving to the bench, Justice Hood was a litigation partner at Isaacson Rosenbaum P.C. in Denver and served as a prosecutor for ten years in Colorado’s 18th Judicial District (encompassing Arapahoe, Douglas, Lincoln and Elbert Counties). At different times, he was a chief trial deputy and the chief appellate deputy.
In 1990, Justice Hood graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law where he was a member of the Virginia Law Review. In 1985, he received his B.A. magna cum laude with honors in International Relations from Syracuse University and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.
Justice Hood is a member of the American, Colorado, and Denver Bar Associations. He is a fellow emeritus of the American and Colorado Bar Foundations. He has served as a member of the Executive Council of the CBA and the Board of Trustees for the DBA. He is a 2007 (inaugural class) graduate of the CBA’s leadership training program (COBALT). He has also taught several courses related to advocacy as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law.