Judy Hoyer - Senior Partner

Judy Schropp Hoyer is one of the founding partners of James, Hoyer, Newcomer & Smiljanich. She has devoted her legal career to prosecuting fraud.

Before starting the firm with her husband Chris Hoyer and friends Bill James and John Newcomer in 1993, Judy was an assistant State Attorney (1976-77), assistant U.S. attorney (1977-85) and again as an assistant State Attorney (1985-93).  She prosecuted cases on an ad hoc basis for the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission, an independent agency created by the Florida Constitution solely to investigate alleged misconduct by Florida state judges.

Judy was born in Havre de Grace, Maryland and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. She attended Mary Washington College while it was still the women’s division of U.Va (1967-68), then dropped out for three years in order to protest the war and other stuff in Washington, DC. She graduated cum laude from George Mason University (1973) and began law school three weeks later at Stetson University (J.D. 1976).   At Stetson, she was executive editor of the law review and governor of the ABA’s 5th Circuit law student division.

Judy believes that the means and methods of committing fraud have changed over the years, but that stealing is still stealing and a thief is still a thief, no matter how well dressed.

She is also an organic farmer in Flat Rock, North Carolina during the summer months.