Jim Moseley strides the back halls of the Texas Fifth District Court of Appeals with the quick step and smile of a man who enjoys his job.

"I get up in the morning and I look forward to coming to work," Moseley admits as he settles into a chair in his chambers. Moseley joined the court in 1996 after ten years as a partner at what was then Locke Purnell Rain Harrell. Though he loves the work, he admits that he misses the contact with people he enjoyed while he practiced.

"Sitting here on the 2nd floor of the courthouse, I have to work to get out and circulate within the community," he explains. "We don’t get that many drop-in visitors."

At times, he even misses the work.

"I liked the preventative nature of being a lawyer, and I liked being able to see problems in advance and help clients avoid them."

Moseley grew up in Eastland County west of Fort Worth, and earned both his undergraduate and law degrees at Baylor. He worked his way through college managing a local movie theater, and he spent his law school weekends moonlighting as a watchman in Waco.

"That [watchman’s job] was great for a law student," he laughs. "I got to study all the time. I think a law student still has that job."

Moseley passed the job to a fellow law student when he graduated in 1978 and moved to Odessa, where he spent five years as a general practitioner handling everything from traffic tickets to employee benefit plans. That broad experience and his deep republican roots earned him the attention of the White House, and in 1983 President Reagan appointed the 29-year-old Moseley to head the five-state regional office of the Federal Trade Commission based in Dallas. Moseley spent four years managing a staff of 18, and was responsible for enforcing federal antitrust and consumer laws in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.

"I loved being regional director." Moseley recalls. "I had a lot of fun, and I got to do things that young lawyers don’t get to do. I was managing people, and dealing with complex economic and public policy issues. And I wanted to make a difference in the way the bureaucracy worked."

Moseley describes his years at Locke Purnell as "really positive," but the allure of a position on the bench in 1996 was more than he could resist.

"I had always thought that someday it would be something I would want to do," he admits, " and one day I woke up with the opportunity to do it" when he was nominated to fill a vacant seat in 1996. Though many judges begin their career on the trial bench, Moseley wanted to go straight to the appellate level.

"Both trial and appellate courts have a need for knowledge in a broad area of law, but the principle focus of a trial bench is the procedural law -- procedural rules and evidentiary rules that they apply everyday, " Moseley explains. At the court of appeals, "we also have to know those procedural and evidentiary rules, but I think that’s a lesser part of what we have to deal with every day. Our challenge is also to know the substantive law in a wide variety of areas. I thought my prior background and varied practice suited me well to come to a court that had a greater impact in a wide variety of areas. "

Moseley plans to run for re-election when his term expires in 2000, and he eloquently defends the often-criticized Texas practice of electing its judges.

"We don’t have a perfect system, but I don’t think there are any perfect systems," Moseley observes. "I consider myself a politician in the best sense of that word. I recognize that the position I hold belongs to the people of the State of Texas, and that the people have a right to decide who sits here. The job that I do, however, is not a political job – it’s a judicial function. In the sense of the job that’s to be done once you arrive, it’s not political at all."

And according to Moseley, it’s a tough job.

"This is a different world," he says thoughtfully, "and the pressure is different -- It’s internally generated. The pressure is to make sure that I effectively hear and understand what the litigants are trying to argue, then correctly apply the law."

The avid Ranger fan finds a professional analogy in the game.

"The pressure is more like that of an an umpire – an advocate is under pressure to prevail, but [when I make a decision] I am under pressure to get it right."