2026 – Present
Judge Paige Reese Whitaker was appointed by Governor Brian Kemp as the 98th judge of the Court of Appeals of Georgia and sworn in on July 16, 2026.
Judge Whitaker graduated magna cum laude from the Honors Program of the College of Charleston in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and earned her law degree from Duke University School of Law in 1992. In college, Judge Whitaker worked for a law firm and interned at a public defender’s office, and in law school, she interned for the North Carolina legislature.
After graduating from law school, Judge Whitaker worked briefly at a real estate litigation firm before joining the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, where she served for over a decade under two different Attorneys General. Judge Whitaker then worked as a Deputy District Attorney in Fulton County, where she led the Appeals Division of the State’s largest and busiest DA’s office.
In her 24 years of practice before joining the bench, in addition to handling complex litigation in trial courts across the state, Judge Whitaker litigated cases in the United States Supreme Court, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, all of Georgia’s federal district courts, the Georgia Supreme Court, and the Georgia Court of Appeals, receiving local and national awards for her appellate advocacy. In February 2017, she was appointed by Governor Nathan Deal to the Superior Court bench of the Atlanta Judicial Circuit after being short-listed in late 2016 for a position on the Georgia Supreme Court.
Judge Whitaker is an elected member of the State Bar of Georgia’s Board of Governors and sits on its Advisory Committee on Legislation and its Disciplinary Rules and Procedure Committee. She is the current President of the Lawyers Club of Atlanta and current Secretary of the Old War Horse Lawyers Club. Judge Whitaker is also active in the Atlanta Bar Association and Georgia Association of Women Lawyers, and is a member of the St. Thomas More Society, Federalist Society, Stonewall Bar Association, Georgia Asian-Pacific American Bar Association, and Gate City Bar Association.
Before joining the Court of Appeals, Judge Whitaker served on the Council of Superior Court Judges as its President-Elect and Secretary/Treasurer as well as on the Legislative, Rules, Continuing Judicial Education, Bench and Bar, and Pattern Jury Charge Committees. She served on the Judicial Council of Georgia’s Executive Committee, Budget Committee, and Ad Hoc Committee on Criminal Justice Reform, and on the Chief Justice’s Statewide COVID-19 Task Force as a Committee Chair. Judge Whitaker also served on the Georgia Commission on Family Violence, including as its Legislative Committee Chair, Vice-Chair, and Chair.
Judge Whitaker has taught as an adjunct law professor at Mercer Law School, as a guest-lecturer at several other Georgia law schools, and as a frequent CLE and CJE presenter. She has mentored aspiring lawyers as a coach and judge for mock trial and moot court teams at the high school, college, and law school levels and hosts summer interns each year. Judge Whitaker is a Master in the Bleckley, Weltner, and Pope Inns of Court.
Judge Whitaker’s other civic and charitable involvement has included chairing a Citizens’ Review Committee charged with monitoring and advising Fulton County’s Juvenile Court on vulnerable youth and serving on the March of Dimes Atlanta Chapter’s Prematurity Prevention Committee. She is a sustainer with the Junior League of Atlanta, a past-Ambassador with the Pink Ribbon Story Foundation serving breast cancer survivors, and a parishioner at her local parish. She is an alumna of GAWL’s Leadership Academy, a past-Fellow of the YWCA of Greater Atlanta’s Georgia Women’s Policy Institute Fellow, and an alumna of Leadership Atlanta.
Judge Whitaker lives in Atlanta and is the proud mother of two college boys.