Judge Hanen grew up in Waco, Texas. He graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio with honors in 1975. He then attended Baylor University School of Law where he graduated first in his class in 1978. Following graduation, he was a briefing attorney for Chief Justice Joe R. Greenhill of the Supreme Court of Texas. He then moved to Houston where he practiced civil trial law for over twenty years. He is Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He has been recognized as the Outstanding Young Lawyer in Texas and as an Outstanding Young Alumnus of Baylor University. He has authored more than one hundred articles for law reviews, national, state and local bar associations and various law schools. In 2000, he was awarded the Professionalism Award by the State Bar College and has also received recognition as the co-author of the state’s Outstanding Law Review Article by the Texas Bar Foundation. He is a past President of the Houston Bar Association and a past director of the State Bar of Texas. He was awarded the Samuel Pessarra Outstanding Jurist Award as the State’s Outstanding Jurist in 2016 by the Texas Bar Foundation.

In 1992, he was nominated to be a United States District Judge by President George H. W. Bush, but the nomination lapsed. He was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2002 to be a District Judge and was confirmed in May of 2002 by a 97-0 Senatorial vote. Judge served in the Brownsville Division of the Southern District of Texas from 2002 until 2018 and presided over one of the busiest dockets in the nation. In 2018 he relocated to the Houston Division. He remains active in continuing legal education by writing and speaking frequently at the request of law schools and bar associations throughout the State. He is married to attorney Diane Dillard. They have one daughter, Kelly Hanen, who is an honors graduate of Dartmouth College and of the University of Texas School of Law.

3:45pm - Hearings and Trials: What Works and What Doesn’t, As Seen From the Bench