BOSTON (WHDH) - Gov. Maura Healey on Monday officially swore in an appeals court judge and former romantic partner with whom she shared a home for several years to an open seat on the state’s highest court.
Massachusetts Appeals Court Associate Justice Gabrielle R. Wolohojian will now serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. Wolohojian is the second nomination to the state’s highest court by Healey, the first woman and first open member of the LGBTQ community to be elected governor of Massachusetts.
“There is no one more qualified or more well prepared to join the SJC than Justice Wolohojian. I’m proud of that nomination and I’m proud of nominating someone who is so deserving and so qualified. It is what the commonwealth deserves,” Healey told reporters at the time of her nomination.
Wolohojian, 63, would fill the seat vacated by Justice David Lowy. Last year Healey nominated then-state solicitor Elizabeth Dewar to the high court.
Wolohojian was appointed to the Appeals Court in February 2008 and has authored more than 900 decisions, according to Healey’s office. She has also served as the chair of the Supreme Judicial Court’s Advisory Committee on the Rules of Appellate Procedure.
Healey and Wolohojian, who met when they both worked at the Boston law firm of Hale & Dorr, had been together for eight years when Healey began her first term as attorney general in 2015, according to a Boston Magazine profile.
Wolohojian and Healey had lived together in a rowhouse in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston that also served as a campaign headquarters for Healey. Wolohojian did not play a public role in the campaign. The governor now lives with her current partner, Joanna Lydgate, in Arlington.
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