Judge Tammy O’Brien was appointed to the Summit County Court of Common Pleas in 2011.  Previously, she was elected to the State Board of Education in 2008 and 2010, where she represented the citizens of Summit, Portage, Trumbull and Ashtabula Counties.

Prior to taking the bench, Judge O’Brien was in the private practice of law in Akron for nineteen years.  From 1999-2011, she was a partner in the law firm of Roderick Linton Belfance LLP, practicing primarily in the areas of business and general civil litigation. She also had extensive experience in appellate practice and in tort and employment litigation and argued before the Supreme Court of Ohio and the federal Courts of Appeals on numerous occasions.

In 1992, she began her career as a judicial law clerk/staff attorney for the Honorable William R. Baird of the Court of Appeals of Ohio, Ninth Appellate District. She has also been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Akron and, for many years, has been selected by the Supreme Court of Ohio to serve as a Reader of the State Bar Examination.

She is co-author of a legal treatise involving the introduction of evidence at trial.  Ohio Motions in Limine: Evidence Exclusion Guide has been published annually by Thompson West since 2007. 

Judge O’Brien also serves the community as a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Red Cross of Summit and Portage Counties.  She is a graduate of Leadership Akron and past president of the Board of Trustees for H.M. Life Opportunity Services.

She graduated from the University of Akron in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Secondary Education and received her Juris Doctorate Degree from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University in 1992.  Judge O’Brien is also the mother of two teenage sons.