Judge Tina Talim Leans on Indian American Background to Retain Seat on Nevada’s Eighth Judicial District Court
- The 46-year-old, who was born in India, and grew up in Clark County in the Silver State, was appointed to the post by Gov. Joe Lombardo.
This June, Tina Talim was appointed to the Nevada Eighth Judicial District Court, making her the first Indian American to hold a judicial position in the state. She joined Department 14 in the busy Eighth District, “where 58 judges preside over nearly 100,000 criminal, civil and family cases filed each year,” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Having been appointed to an elected role to replace Adriana Escobar, Talim has to defend her seat in the Nov. 5 election. She is on the ballot along with Alan Lefebvre, who served as the 89th president of the State Bar of Nevada.
The India-born Talim most recently served as team chief of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Unit in the Clark County District Attorney’s Office. She served as “one of the longest-serving team chiefs in the District Attorney’s Office and prosecuted over 5,000 felony cases during her tenure,” according to her official profile.
Talim told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that her priority is that the District Court continue to move cases along without delays. Having spent time both as a prosecutor and judge meeting community members, Talim told the publication that the onus is on her to make sure voters know her background and values. She said she feels this sense of opportunity, particularly in Clark County, which she chose to make home after leaving Southern California, where her parents opened the first Indian restaurant in West Los Angeles.
She realizes that being the Indian-American judge in the state of Nevada is both a great honor and a lot of pressure. “While the historic nature of her potential appointment didn’t drive her to apply to be a District Court judge,” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that she was “aware” of what it might symbolize. “I get to be a role model for the next generation of attorneys and the next generation of judges.” Along with being a role model for young girls all over the county, she hopes her daughters — who are 17-year-old twins — view her as one as well. When they hope to go into medicine rather than law, she hopes “they too will break barriers.”
Talim immigrated to the United States as a young child. She went to the University of California, Los Angeles, then Pepperdine School of Law. While in law school, she clerked with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office where she conducted several preliminary hearings and second-chaired two felony trials including a homicide case. In her third year of law school, she worked for a family law and estate planning firm. After graduating from law school, she worked for a civil litigation firm specializing in plaintiff’s injury and mass tobacco litigation.
Talim moved to Las Vegas in 2004 and upon successfully passing the bar exam, she began her career in civil litigation, focusing on medical malpractice defense. In August 2005, she started what would become a nearly two-decade-long career with the Clark County District Attorney’s Office. She wanted the office to both change its makeup and increase community outreach to Clark County’s diverse populations, she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “When you have an office that looks like the community it serves, that builds trust with the community.”
After a few years on a general litigation team, having tried 35 jury trials including murder, sexual assault, crimes against children, and robbery, Talim was promoted to the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Unit. There, she was tasked with leading a team focused on the prosecution of national and international drug trafficking cartels.
In 2023, Talim was tasked with heading all community outreach efforts for the District Attorney’s Office. She “worked with local organizations to encourage first-generation students to consider careers in law and helped develop scholarships for law students, also focused on educating our youth about drug abuse and overdose prevention,” her profile said.
Talim is a two-time recipient of the “Prosecutor of the Year” award, and was the first civilian to receive the Exemplary Service award by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for her prosecution of a notorious local gang. In 2012, she received the “Outstanding Investigative Effort” award from the Office of President Barack Obama for her efforts in prosecuting one of Nevada’s most prolific drug cartels. She is a guest speaker at the William S. Boyd School of Law, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and various community organizations.
(Top photo, Tina Talim/Facebook)