Judge Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals, is the daughter of Dallas restaurant owners who saw that she got an early start on a solid education. When she was just four, they enrolled her in Greenhill School, where she remained through high school. After graduation from Greenhill, Judge Keller attended the University of Dallas for a year, then transferred to Rice University in Houston. When she graduated from Rice in 1975 with a degree in philosophy, she was uncertain what she wanted to do next. It was her father who suggested law school; he thought the law was something she might like. She decided he was right and enrolled in Southern Methodist University School of Law, graduating in 1978.

Judge Keller said her interest in criminal and appellate law came about in the natural progression of her career. She began her practice in Dallas, working with a solo practitioner, and found she gravitated toward juvenile and appellate work. But her path, which would eventually lead to the bench, took a detour when her son was born. While he was very young, she worked full time for her parents’ restaurant business, although she still took some juvenile cases to keep in touch with her legal career.

By the time her son started at Greenhill, Judge Keller was ready to return to law practice. From a fellow Greenhill parent, she learned of an opening in the appellate division of the District Attorney’s office, where she worked from 1987 until 1994. On New Year’s Eve 1993, Judge Keller made an important decision. She decided to run for the Court of Criminal Appeals and she won. She has now been on the Court of Appeals for eight years and presiding judge for the past two years.

Judge Keller’s son followed her from Greenhill School to Rice, where he is now a junior.

She enjoys activities such as roller-skating, cycling, and swimming. She is thinking about taking up ice skating next. She is an avid reader and has just completed Borderland, a novel about Austin in the 1840s. She is now in the midst of a much longer work, Swann’s Way, the first volume of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past.

When asked what she might have done had she not become a lawyer and a judge, Judge Keller thought for a moment and then replied, "I don’t know. Can you read for a living?"