Halim Dhanidina (born September 20, 1972) is an American lawyer and former judge from

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. As of April 1, 2022, is a partner at the criminal defense firm of Werksman Jackson & Quinn LLP in Los Angeles. He was a justice of the

California Court of Appeal The California Courts of Appeal are the state intermediate appellate courts in the U.S. state of California. The state is geographically divided along county lines into six appellate districts.

for the Second District. Appointed to the

Los Angeles Superior Court The Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, is the California superior court with jurisdiction over Los Angeles County, which includes the city of Los Angeles. It is the largest single unified trial court in the United States. The ...

bench by Governor

Jerry Brown Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of ...

in 2012, he is the first Muslim to ever be appointed judge in

. He is an Ismaili

Shiite Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most ...

Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

n heritage, his parents immigrating from Tanzania.

Career

Halim Dhanidina was born in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

in 1972. He graduated from

Evanston Township High School Evanston Township High School (ETHS) District 202, is a four-year public high school occupying a campus in Evanston, Illinois, a north suburb of Chicago along the Lake Michigan shore. ETHS was established in 1883 and serves the city of Evanston ...

in 1990. He was a Deputy District Attorney of Los Angeles County for fourteen years, prosecuting cases for the Hardcore Gang and Major Crimes Divisions. He is also a founding member of the Association of South Asian Prosecutors, and a member of the Asia Pacific American and South Asian Bar Association. Prior to becoming a prosecutor, he obtained a Juris Doctor degree from

UCLA School of Law The UCLA School of Law is one of 12 professional schools at the University of California, Los Angeles. UCLA Law has been consistently ranked by '' U.S. News & World Report'' as one of the top 20 law schools in the United States since the inception ...

, where he was the co-chair of the Asia Pacific Islander Law Students Association. Before that, he completed a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in International Relations at

Pomona College Pomona College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became t ...

in 1994, where he founded the Muslim Students Association. In 2012, Governor Brown appointed him to serve as a judge on the Los Angeles County Superior Court and in 2018 Brown appointed him to Division Three of the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District. The Commission on Judicial Appointments unanimously confirmed him on August 23, 2018. He is a devoted teacher and mentor and has worked as an adjunct professor at the Chapman University Fowler School of Law, Western State Law School,

Whittier Law School Whittier Law School was a law school in Costa Mesa, California founded in 1966. The law school was part of Whittier College, a private institution. After several years being ranked among the poorest-performing law schools in the United States ba ...

and the Glendale University College of Law, where he has taught criminal trial advocacy, civil trial advocacy, criminal procedure, professional responsibility, and California criminal law. The former justice is also a law lecturer at The Universitry of California in Los Angeles Law School and is an adjunct professor at UCI Irvine. In April 2016, while dismissing charges of

lewd conduct Sexual misconduct is misconduct of a sexual nature which exists on a spectrum that may include a broad range of sexual behaviors considered unwelcome. This includes conduct considered inappropriate on an individual or societal basis of morality, s ...

and indecent exposure against a defendant in his court, Judge Dhanidina strongly criticized sting operations by the Long Beach Police Department directed at gay men seeking sex in public places, noting that the sting operations appeared to induce the conduct for which the defendants were then arrested, and that the police apparently did not conduct any similar sting operations directed at heterosexual conduct. In April 2022, former Justice Dhanidina joined the California defense firm Werksman, Jackson & Quinn LLP.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dhanidina, Halim 1972 births Living people California state court judges UCLA School of Law alumni Pomona College alumni Gujarati people American Ismailis American people of Gujarati descent Judges of the California Courts of Appeal American people of Indian descent Khoja Ismailism