At Monday night’s Battle Ground City Council meeting, applause filled the courtroom where prosecutor Jill Karmy has spent years representing several north Clark County cities. This time, the room turned its attention to her as the city honored her appointment by Governor Bob Ferguson to the role of Cowlitz County Superior Court Judge.
“I’m super humbled, very sad, so I don’t wanna cry,” she told the crowd. “Truly, this job has been one of the best of my legal career.”
Officers and colleagues from multiple cities packed into the council chamber Monday night to wish her well, many of them people she’s worked with on local cases.
“I will truly, truly miss working with our local law enforcement,” she said. “They do an excellent job at community policing.”
Karmy, a Ridgefield resident, will step into her new position Nov. 1, succeeding Judge Marilyn Haan. The governor’s announcement last month marked the culmination of a long career that spanned civil litigation, prosecution and judicial work. For Karmy, it also marked a deeply personal milestone.
She says her decision to pursue law traces back to an adoption story that nearly didn’t happen.
“My twin brother and I were born to a woman who couldn’t keep us, and the doctor, was female doctor, who delivered us, 1978, wanted to adopt us,” Karmy said. “She apparently didn’t maybe do all the correct steps because when she went to actually get us enrolled in school at four years old and … we didn’t have birth certificates or social security numbers or anything like that.”
Henry H. Whiting, a Virginia judge, ultimately ruled the adoption lawful, defying objections from the Commonwealth of Virginia. Her adoptive mother gave her the opportunities in life to pursue a career in law. Though she did not specifically aspire to become a judge, Karmy said the Virginia judge’s decision stayed with her for decades.
“I still have that 1982 decision,” she said. “I read it before my interview with the governor …I’ve kind of always known I wanted to be someone like that, to make a decision that 47 years later has impacted a person and their success.”
Before becoming a court commissioner in Cowlitz County in 2022, Karmy spent nearly 20 years in private practice. Her legal path began in Portland, where she defended employers in workplace cases before switching sides to represent workers in Longview. In 2021, she stepped into prosecution work to help a colleague who was short-staffed during the pandemic.
“I didn’t jump into any criminal work until 2021, just to help out a friend because with COVID, court hearings weren’t there, he had lost some lawyers who didn’t wanna be appearing in court at that time,” she said. “So I jumped in and started learning criminal law just to help a friend out, and it was one of those moments where I’m like, oh, after about 18 years of doing civil work, I learned this new area of the law that kind of reinvigorated my passion for doing legal work.”
That shift led her to municipal prosecution work for Battle Ground, Ridgefield, and La Center—cities where she’s become a familiar face in the courtroom.
“There’s something about this job, and I think it’s that you are the prosecutor, not like in Clark County, where you take turns on cases,” she told the audience Monday. “You are the decision maker, you are the front base, you talk to victims, you do it all—so it’s a really, really cool job.”
Her work on the bench will build on the community-driven focus she’s brought to prosecution. Earlier this year, she helped launch Battle Ground’s first community court, designed to connect defendants to social services and treatment programs rather than only impose punishment.
“We’ve had some success stories with people going to rehabilitation, sobriety, getting licenses reinstated,” she said during Monday’s meeting. “So thank you for the work you’ve done with Community Court.”
Service beyond the courtroom has been another throughline in Karmy’s career. She volunteered with Lutheran Community Services and Friends of the Carpenter to organize a pop-up clothing and supply shop for Afghan refugees after the U.S. withdrawal in 2021. She also spent a week in 2018 at an immigration detention center preparing women and children for asylum hearings.
“I’ve always been a person [who], when I feel like someone or a group is oppressed for whatever reason, if there is a skill I have to help, I will use it,” she said. “A lot of times, with world disasters, they need doctors, and I’m not a doctor.”
“My mom, the one who adopted me, was a physician,” Karmy added. “She was an OBGYN (Obstetrician-Gynecologist), and she would often go on mission projects to third-world countries and deliver babies, cause that’s what she did here.”
Maintaining a proper work-life balance can be challenging in a law career. Outside of the bench, Karmy finds her balance on the slopes.
“My mom had us on skis when we were four years old,” she said. “I switched to snowboarding when I was 14, and I still snowboard. It’s my happy place.”
As she prepares to transition to the bench, Karmy said she hopes to continue building bridges between justice system stakeholders and the communities they serve.
“What it reinforced for me,” she said of Monday’s recognition, “was what I do strive for, to have the type of working relationships with every stakeholder in the justice system.”
She said seeing legal colleagues, law enforcement and city officials in one room was something she will continue to strive for on the bench.
“I’m hoping to take that same type of bridge building with me on the bench where, although I will be in a different capacity, I still very much hope that stakeholders and law enforcement and justice and therapeutics, work with me to create a system … we may approach it differently, but we all want safe communities, no matter how, no matter who we are and what we believe, and I think if we work together, we can get that.”
