Former Massachusetts GOP Chairman Kirsten Hughes Among Baker’s Latest Judicial Nominees
By State House News Service | October 6, 2022, 19:01 EDT
By Chris Lisinski
State House News Service
A longtime prosecutor with experience in narcotics and asset forfeiture would join the bench and a former MassGOP chairman now serving a clerk magistrate role would move to a new court if Governor Charlie Baker’s latest batch of judicial nominations are accepted.
Baker on Wednesday nominated Jeremy Bucci to serve as a Superior Court justice, Kirsten Hughes as clerk magistrate of Boston Municipal Court’s South Boston Division, and Christopher Phillips as clerk magistrate of Boston Municipal Court’s Brighton Division.
Bucci has more than two decades of experience as a prosecutor after beginning his career in 2001 as an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County. From September 2008 to December 2010, he led the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office’s narcotics and asset forfeiture unit.
In 2011, Bucci became chief trial counsel for the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office, a role the UMass Amherst and Suffolk University Law School graduate holds today.
Hughes, a former Quincy city councilor, spent seven years as chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party while working as an attorney at Palmucci Law. In 2019, after current MassGOP chairman Jim Lyons succeeded Hughes, Baker tapped her to serve as clerk magistrate in Stoughton District Court and she won the approval of the Governor’s Council with a 5-2 vote.
Before she joined the judiciary, Hughes worked as general counsel and special sheriff in the office of Norfolk County Sheriff Jerry McDermott.
Phillips, the third and final nominee Baker named Wednesday, has served as assistant clerk magistrate in the Boston Municipal Court since 2006 and as the first assistant clerk since May 2020. He previously worked as a business manager and administrative assistant for the state Senate and in the University of Massachusetts’s president’s office.
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