Speaker Biography The Honorable Linda Marie Bell
Justice Linda Marie Bell was elected to the Nevada Supreme Court, November 2022. Previously, she sat for fourteen years in the civil/criminal divisions of the Eighth Judicial District Court. In 2019, her peers elected her the court's Chief Judge where she was responsible for overseeing the operation of the largest, most varied and active court in Nevada. During her tenure, she managed the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic, developing and implementing a COVID-19 trial plan to allow jury trials to move forward safely when many other courts remained closed. She was a driving force in establishing the court's Veteran’s Treatment Court and worked to implement the Gambling Diversion Treatment Court, the only one of its kind in the country.
Before coming to the bench, she spent seven years in the non-capital post-conviction unit of the Federal Public Defender handling complex post-conviction cases. Justice Bell was a public defender for five years in Clark County, handling felony criminal trial cases, and previously had a private practice in the areas of medical malpractice and family law for three years. She clerked for the Honorable Sally Loehrer (8th JD) after having been admitted to the Nevada Bar in October in 1993.
Justice Bell was a 2019 recipient of the Clark County Law Foundation Liberty Bell Award, the 2021 recipient of the Southern Nevada Women Attorney’s annual Miriam Shearing Award, and the 2022 recipient of the NCJFCJ Impact of the Year Award. Justice Bell served as Chair of the National Conference of State Trial Judges and served for two years as Chair of the ABA Judicial Division Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee. Justice Bell is a past president of Nevada District Judges Association. Justice Bell taught criminal law and criminal procedure at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas from 2011 until 2022.