LexisNexis Practice Guide: Massachusetts Appellate Practice

Justice Christopher J. Armstrong was one of the six original justices of the Massachusetts Appeals Court, appointed to that position by Governor Francis W. Sargent when the court was created in the summer of 1972. He was appointed Chief Justice of the Appeals Court by Governor Paul Cellucci in 2000. Under the Massachusetts mandatory retirement law, he stepped down as the Appeals Court’s Chief Justice (and as the then senior member of the Massachusetts judiciary) in 2006. Thereafter Justice Armstrong served the court for two additional years as a retired recall justice, leaving finally in 2008, having served the Court as a justice for the first thirty-six years of its history. During his tenure, he authored more than 1,100 signed opinions.

In 2006, the Boston Bar Association awarded Justice Armstrong its Citation of Judicial Excellence. The Massachusetts Bar Association awarded him its highest judicial award, the Chief Justice Edward F. Hennessey Award for exceptional contributions to the administration of justice in the Commonwealth. In 2007, Justice Armstrong was named by Massachusetts Lawyers’ Weekly as one of thirty-five persons who had most influenced the practice of law in Massachusetts over the previous thirty-five years.

Prior to becoming a judge, Justice Armstrong, a graduate of Yale and Yale Law School, was a law clerk in the Superior Court. He lived a year in Nigeria under the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Fellows-in-Africa Program. Upon his return, he served several months as Executive Clerk to Chief Justice G. Joseph Tauro; then, in roughly two-year intervals, as Assistant Legal Counsel under Governor John A. Volpe, Assistant Attorney General under then Massachusetts Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson, and as Chief Legal Counsel under Governor Francis W. Sargent. In 1970, Armstrong was named as one of “Boston’s Ten Outstanding Young Men” by the Boston Junior Chamber of Commerce. (The award did not become gender-neutral until 1985.) He was serving as Massachusetts Undersecretary of Administration when he was appointed to the new Appeals Court in 1972 by Governor Sargent.

Justice Armstrong was appointed by the Supreme Judicial Court to be the first chairman of the Committee on Judicial Ethics, and served in that capacity for his maximum eligibility, ten years. Justice Armstrong has served as co-chair of the Administration of Justice Committee of the Boston Bar Association, a member of the editorial board of the Massachusetts Law Review, and a member of the Boston Bar Association’s Task Force on the Causes of Wrongful Convictions.

Justice Armstrong has been active in the Council of Chief Judges of State Courts of Appeal, affiliated with the National Center for State Courts, as well as in a number of civic and charitable activities in Newburyport and Newbury, where he lives on a farm with Liz, his wife of fifty-nine years. He is currently Of Counsel to Mr. Carey’s Law Office.

Attorney Carey specializes in appellate practice, civil or criminal, in state or federal courts. The Carey Law Office website can be accessed at www.tjcarey-appellatelaw.com. -He is also an adjunct professor at Boston College Law School. with which he has had a long association as a student, alumnus, and faculty member. He holds a J.D. degree from Boston College Law School, where he earned several academic awards, including Order of the Coif. He also has a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School. He was admitted to practice as an Attorney and Counsellor at Law in all the Courts of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by the Supreme Judicial Court. He is also admitted to practice before the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.

Attorney Carey’s distinguished legal career includes federal clerkships with United States District Court Judges Andrew A, Caffrey and Frank Murray in the District of Massachusetts, a decade as a full-time law teacher at Suffolk and Boston College Law schools, government service as the Appellate Attorney of the Major Violators Division in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, and private practice. He led the Appeals Group at Dwyer & Collora (later Collora), was an appellate attorney in the Boston office of HoganLovells, and is currently the principal at the Law Office of Thomas J. Carey, Jr. (https://www.tjcarey-appellatelaw.com). During his career, Mr. Carey has taught and practiced across a broad spectrum of legal subjects.

Mr. Carey chairs the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Amicus Curiae Committee and co-chairs its Appellate Bench-Bar Committee, serves on the editorial board of the Massachusetts Law Review, and is a Brandeis Life Fellow of the Massachusetts Bar Foundation. In 2021, he received the MBA’s prestigious President’s Award for his service to the Association, and in 2022 he received its Volunteer Recognition Award. He is also a member of the Boston Bar Association, the Plymouth County Bar Association, and the American Bar Association.

A former Director of Advocacy Programs at Boston College Law School, Mr. Carey has long been active in teaching advocacy skills to students and lawyers alike and has coached championship moot court teams. He created an innovative seminar in Appellate Advocacy in which students handled real life cases and taught the course at BC Law for twenty-five years. He currently teaches an Amicus Clinic in which faculty and students prepare and submit amicus briefs to the courts on major legal issues of the day.

He has been a frequent lecturer at bar association programs on legal writing and appellate advocacy. He is also a public speaker who gives talks and courses to the general public on various legal subjects, including the Rule of Law, the Supreme Court, the Legal Process, and several landmark cases in Massachusetts along with information about the lawyers and judges involved in them.

Mr. Carey resides in Hingham with his wife, Ann. He has long been active in the Town’s civic affairs and is a Trustee of the Hingham Public Library.