Judge Thompson Admonished Years After Resigning

Two Weeks In, and It Was Already Falling Apart

Millie Thompson took office as judge of Hays County Court at Law No. 3 on January 4, 2021. Seventeen days later, when the court’s lead assistant administrator, Chris Perez, emailed her about a probate case that had been placed on the wrong docket, Thompson replied that the mix-up was “grounds for termination” if he was her coordinator. The next day she called Perez into her chambers, accused him of lying to her twice, and pressed him repeatedly to confess. When he asked her to prove it, she began yelling, walked toward him pointing her finger, and ordered him out, then fired him on the spot as he left. Another Hays County judge, Robert Updegrove, heard the confrontation through the walls and walked Perez to Human Resources himself.

Within days, Thompson issued a cease-and-desist order, including a criminal trespass warning, against Updegrove and a third judge, Chris Johnson, barring them and their staff from entering her office. She wrote to them that they had created a hostile work environment by entering her chambers and by telling her staff she lacked authority to fire her own coordinator, and accused them of retaliating against her for winning her election. She also hired a private locksmith to rekey her office door; when the county’s building maintenance director tried to walk her through the county’s own re-keying policy, the Commission found she berated him, yelled at him, issued a written “order” demanding the lock be changed anyway, and threatened him with contempt of court.

A Lawsuit, a Recusal Pattern and an Abrupt Exit

In April 2021, Thompson sued Judges Johnson and Updegrove, later adding the Hays County Commissioners Court, arguing the county’s shared court-administrator system unlawfully blocked her from appointing her own coordinator and court reporter. She told the Commission she was “a lone female judge, blocked from exercising a statutory right to appoint my staff” by the two male judges who she said controlled her court. She eventually nonsuited the case and it was dismissed. Around the same time, the Commission found, she recused herself from and reassigned several attorneys’ cases without a valid legal explanation.

Her assistant court administrator, Kyla Crumley Stoddard, later told the Commission that coworkers grew afraid to even be seen talking to each other for fear of what Thompson might do, and described her time working for Thompson as the most toxic and hostile experience of her career. Thompson’s own response to that account was blunt: she said she treated Stoddard professionally but did not like her, and believed she had gotten the job through nepotism and was bad at it. On May 12, 2021, four months and eight days after taking office, Thompson left a single handwritten line on her desk: “I hereby resign as judge of Hays County Court at Law #3, effective upon receipt of this resignation.” She did not say why.

When the Commission finally brought her in to testify in August 2025, more than four years after she had left office, Thompson appeared but declined to answer any questions, telling the Commission she could not afford an attorney to represent her.

The Discipline Ladder (Texas)

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct issues sanctions, in order of severity, as admonitions, warnings, reprimands, and censures, either privately (confidential) or publicly (on the record). A public admonition, the sanction here, is the least severe sanction the Commission can issue on the public record. It is also, practically speaking, close to the only sanction available once a judge has already left office: removal and suspension exist to end an active judge’s tenure, which was no longer on the table four years after Thompson resigned.

The Rules She Broke

How It Played in the Press

Thompson’s four months in office generated an unusually large amount of contemporaneous local and national coverage for a county court-at-law judge: the Austin American-Statesman, the Hays Free Press News-Dispatch, the San Marcos Record, and even the American Bar Association Journal all covered the cease-and-desist order, the locksmith episode, the lawsuit, and eventually the resignation itself as it happened in real time in early and mid-2021. When the Commission’s admonition finally issued more than four years later, Texas Scorecard picked the story back up, tying the 2025 sanction to the chaotic 2021 timeline for readers who likely had not thought about the case in years.

Where Is She Now?

Thompson has not held judicial office since her May 2021 resignation. Hays County Commissioners appointed a replacement to serve out the remainder of her term, and the seat was decided by voters again in the 2022 and 2024 election cycles. Nothing in the public record indicates she has run for judicial office again.

Facing the System in Texas?

Judges are bound by rules too, and there are systems (public sanctions and appeals) built to hold them to it, even years after the fact. Deandra Grant Law handles federal and state criminal defense in Texas.

Call (214) 225-7117 • texasdwisite.com

Sources

PRIMARY SOURCE

• State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Public Admonition, In the Matter of the Hon. Millie Thompson, CJC No. 21-0950, issued August 11, 2025. scjc.texas.gov

NEWS COVERAGE

• Texas Scorecard: State Commission Reprimands Former Hays County Judge (2025). texasscorecard.com
• San Marcos Corridor News: Hays County Judge Millie Thompson unexpectedly resigns (2021). smcorridornews.com
• Hays Free Press: Millie Thompson resigns four months into her judgeship (2021). haysfreepress.com

REFERENCE

• State Commission on Judicial Conduct: Public Sanctions, Fiscal Year 2025. scjc.texas.gov

This post summarizes public judicial-discipline records and news reporting for general informational purposes. It is not legal advice.