Christopher P. Yates

Hon. Christopher P. Yates joined the Michigan Court of Appeals on April 18, 2022, after serving for 14 years as a trial judge on the Kent County Circuit Court in Grand Rapids. As an attorney, he clerked for Chief Judge James P. Churchill of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and for Judge Ralph B. Guy, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Yates also worked as a federal prosecutor in Detroit, as an attorney-advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., as Chief Federal Public Defender for the Western District of Michigan, and as a partner in two private law firms in Grand Rapids. Judge Yates is a past president of the Michigan Judges Association, the Grand Rapids Bar Association and the Gerald Ford American Inns of Court chapter. He is the 2019 recipient of the Hilda Gage Judicial Excellence Award from the Michigan Judges Association, the 2020 recipient of the Judicial Excellence Award from the Michigan Defense Trial Counsel and the 2022 recipient of the Judicial Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Board of Trial Advocates, and he is a member of the Michigan Supreme Court Committee on Model Civil Jury Instructions, as well as a four-time inductee into the Kalamazoo College Athletic Hall of Fame as a tennis player. Judge Yates received his B.A. from Kalamazoo College in 1983 and his M.B.A. and J.D. from the University of Illinois in 1987.