Judge Tamara Harris Johnson
10th Judicial Circuit Court
Judge Tamara Harris Johnson is a Jefferson County Circuit Civil Court Judge. She is a graduate of Spelman College, Atlanta, GA and Howard University School of Law. While a third-year law student, she co-authored, with Dean Herbert O. Reid, Sr. and EEOC Commissioner J. Clay Smith, an Amicus Curiae Brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on The Regents of the University of California v. Alan Bakke, commissioned by the National Medical Association. She was admitted, by exam, to practice law in the District of Columbia (1978), Michigan (1981), California (1983) and Alabama (1989). She was as a law clerk to D.C. Superior Court Judge William S. Thompson and the first female and first African American attorney to represent D.C. union members in the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, National Association of Government Employees and American Federation of Government Employees. She was a prosecutor in Los Angeles and Jefferson County. She was the first In-House Counsel for the Birmingham Public School System, and the first female City Attorney for the City of Birmingham, hired by Mayor Bernard Kincaid. She was a Bar Examiner for the State of Alabama from 2000 to 2004, and she taught Basic Skills in Trial Advocacy at Cumberland School of Law. Judge Johnson is a graduate of Leadership Birmingham (1995) and Leadership Alabama (2000). She is the first African American female to receive the distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the Birmingham Bar Association, which she received in 2023. She is the 2025 recipient of the Maud McLure Kelly Award, by the Women’s Section, Alabama State Bar, for making a lasting impact on the legal profession and whose commitment to women’s rights was and continues to be an inspiration for all women in Alabama. She is a 2025 Birmingham Bar Foundation Fellow. She is most proud of being the mother of Erica Parker, M.D. (Emergency Medicine) and Major Ashley Johnson, JAG, U.S. Air Force (LLM in Military Law, with specialty in National Security).
