Judge David Gill, JD ’59 (BA ‘56), donned his first judge’s robe in 1974. He remembers a feeling of comfort in his new role. A career that required him to listen carefully to all sides spoke to his talents. Here, he knew he could best serve his community.

And that’s what he did for half a century.

On December 13, 2024—his 90th birthday—Judge Gill will retire from the San Diego Superior Court after 45 years on the bench, the longest-ever service for a San Diego Superior Court judge. Prior to his decades on the Superior Court, Judge Gill spent five years as a San Diego Municipal Court Judge, appointed by then-California Governor Ronald Reagan, bringing his years on the bench in San Diego to 50.

“It never felt like work to me,” says Judge Gill, who graduated from San Diego High School in 1952 before heading north to Stanford, where he majored in economics, history, and political science before enrolling at SLS. “It was an honor to serve as a judge and I never forgot that.”

Judge Gill’s commitment to honor and service also is evidenced by his military service. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves in 1955, while he was an undergraduate, and continued serving while in law school. After graduating from SLS, he represented soldiers as a lawyer in the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps. He continued as an Army reservist throughout much of his professional career, completing 35 years of service in 1990.

Assigned to the Superior Court’s criminal docket, Judge Gill has a deep reverence for the judicial system and was often the judge who would hear the most wrenching cases, including those involving violent sex offenders—the ones other judges sometimes preferred to avoid.

“I knew I had the temperament to do it, and so I did it,” he says matter of factly. Judge Gill presided over a number of death penalty cases and one case that ran for 217 days, the longest criminal trial in San Diego Superior Court history.

Fellow Superior Court Judge Selena Dong Epley, JD ’95, a former public defender who tried cases in front of Judge Gill before joining him on the bench, describes him as kind, humble, and a role model to other judges. “He has always treated his seat on the court as the honor it is,” she says.

He started what is now a “deeply cherished” tradition in the San Diego court, Judge Epley says: arriving at the court early in the morning to personally welcome the hundreds of people in that day’s jury pool.

The morning greetings, which other of Gill’s fellow judges have now taken over, were an expression of his deep reverence for the judicial system and a note of appreciation to the community members for fulfilling their role in the justice system.

“I always let the jurors know that I understood they probably had other important things to do,” he says, “but after my little pep talk, I think they understood what they were doing had great importance.”