Justice Charles K. Wiggins

Charlie Wiggins was elected to the Supreme Court in 2010. He was admitted to the Bar in 1976 and focused primarily on representing hundreds of clients in appeals, both civil and criminal, in the State Supreme Court, the State Court of Appeals, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and once as co-counsel in the United States Supreme Court, in addition to trying cases in several different counties throughout Washington. He practiced with a small Seattle law firm at the time known as Edwards, Sieh, Wiggins & Hathaway. He served as a judge on Division Two of the Washington Court of Appeals, following which he established a small firm on Bainbridge Island handling exclusively appellate cases. He has also served as a pro tem superior court judge in a number of cases in King and Jefferson Counties and as a pro tem district court judge in Kitsap County.

The son of a career warrant officer, Justice Wiggins grew up in the Army and earned the Boy Scout Eagle Scout award. With the help of an ROTC scholarship, he attended Princeton University, where he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He spent the next four years in the Army Military Intelligence Corps, leaving as a Captain. While in the Army, Justice Wiggins was able to attend night school, earning a Masters Degree in Business Administration. The G.I. Bill helped him to attend Duke Law School, where he graduated in 1976.

Justice Wiggins is a member of the Supreme Court Rules Committee, the Administrative Committee, the Personnel Committee, the Temple of Justice Centennial Committee, the Appellate Education Committee, the Disciplinary Advisory Round Table, the Capitol Furnishings Preservation Committee and the Board for Court Education. While in private practice, Justice Wiggins was active on the Washington State Bar Rules Committee, the Disciplinary Board, and other committees and task forces. He served as president-elect, president, and past president of the Washington Chapter of the American Judicature Society. He worked with a coalition of lawyers, bar associations and government groups to establish the nonpartisan award-winning website votingforjudges.org. The Young Lawyers Section of the Washington State Bar Association gave Justice Wiggins their Professionalism Award in 2008. In 2012, he was awarded the Herbert Harley Award by the American Judicature Society for promoting the effective administration of justice.

Justice Wiggins has served as an elder of Rolling Bay Presbyterian Church on Bainbridge Island, on the Civil Service Commission of Bainbridge Island, on the Editorial Board of the Kitsap Sun, and on the Board of the Central Puget Sound Campfire Boys and Girls. He has traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, with his church's high school youth group five times to build houses for families and twice to post-Katrina New Orleans to work with Habitat for Humanity. In 2001, he partnered with Habitat for Humanity to organize and lead the lawyers of Kitsap County in building a home for a single mother and her children, and again in 2009 to build a home for a second single mother and her children, earning him the 2010 Humanitarian Award from the Kitsap Bar Association. In the early nineties Justice Wiggins traveled to Albania three times to participate in judicial conferences, assisting with that country's transition from communism to democracy. In 2004 he was named Volunteer of the Year by the legal clinic of the Union Gospel Mission in Seattle, where he counseled and represented many residents.

Justice Wiggins and his wife, Nancy, live on Bainbridge Island; their daughter Amy and son Sam are both now in their twenties. In their spare time, they enjoy boating in the San Juans, hiking in the Olympics, and in 2008 rode in the Seattle to Portland classic bike ride on their tandem bike. Justice Wiggins also enjoys snowboarding and scuba diving.