About me
A Cook County Circuit Judge, Thomas More Donnelly, was sworn in as a judge more than 25 years ago on January 7, 2000. He has received over four hundred jury verdicts. He currently sits in the Law Division, Commercial Calendar, deciding motions, convening settlement conferences, and conducting trials in business disputes. Before his current assignment, he tried medical malpractice, products lability, and other torts in the Law Division. He has served in: traffic, felony preliminary hearing, misdemeanor, domestic violence, evictions, and contract courts. On the faculty of the National Judicial College for nearly ten years, he helped found and chaired the Illinois Judicial College. Before joining the judiciary, the Honorable Mary Ann G. McMorrow hired him as her law clerk, and the Cook County Public Defender employed him as an assistant public defender for 18 months and a supervisor for over ten years.
Judge Donnelly has received: the Chicago Bar Association’s Vanguard Award (2025), the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Access to Justice’s The Hon. Thomas L. Kilbride (Ret.) Judicial Access to Justice Award (2024), the St. John’s Alumni Association Award of Merit, (2024), the Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity Hon. Mary Ann G. McMorrow Distinguished Service Award (2020), the Center for Disability and Elder Law Impact Award (2019), the Illinois Judges Association Harold Sullivan Award (2018), the Loyola University School of Law St. Robert Bellarmine Award (1994) and the Chicago Bar Association David C. Hilliard Award (1986). Teaching at Loyola Law School since 1987, Judge Donnelly directed the Philip H. Corboy Trial Advocacy Fellowship for twenty years (1995-2016). He has taught Illinois Litigation: Race Injustice and Poverty, Illinois Civil Litigation Practice, Professional Responsibility, Professional Responsibility Seminar, and Criminal Procedure.
