Gov. Phil Murphy intends to nominate eight new Superior Court Judges when the Senate returns this month, including the filling of three open seats in Somerset County, where judicial shortages have shut down civil and matrimonial trials.
One of his picks is Lance Kalik, the co-managing partner at one of the state’s oldest law firms and the son of former Assembly Appropriations Committee Chair Barbara Kalik (D-Willingboro).
Kalik has been co-managing partner at Riker Danzig since 2017 and has run their insurance and reinsurance practice since 2014.
Also tapped for Somerset County seats: Frank Morano, a former deputy attorney general, and assistant Hudson County Prosecutor; and John Bruder, the Bound Brook municipal prosecutor.
For a seat in Ocean County, Murphy is nominating Anthony Merlino, the assistant Toms River township attorney and a former law clerk to New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Deborah Poritz. Rebecca Bertram, a lawyer from Bridgeton, was picked to fill an open seat in Cumberland County.
Three of the potential judges are from Union County, including Anthony Parenti, a sixteen-year assistant Union County Prosecutor who spent 26 years as a Summit police sergeant before becoming an attorney. His late father was the longtime Fanwood police chief and later, a Republican councilman.
Murphy is also nominating Raquel Vallejo, a family lawyer and trustee of the Hispanic Bar Association of New Jersey, and Kelly Waters, the managing partner of a New York law firm’s New Jersey office. She specializes in product liability cases.
Barbara Kalik, now known as Barbara Bennett, had become the first woman to serve as mayor of Willingboro and won a State Assembly seat in 1977 after Charles Yates gave up his 7th district seat to successfully challenge an incumbent in the Democratic Senate primary. She served seven terms as an assemblywoman before becoming a casualty of the 1991 anti-Jim Florio Republican wave election.