GOV. MAURA HEALEY on Wednesday nominated a commercial litigation counsel for National Grid and assistant clerk magistrate in Boston to the District Court bench.
She also hopes to elevate Judge Zachary Hillman, associate justice of the District Court since 2021, to serve as a judge in the Appeals Court.
Hillman is the first justice of the Worcester District Court and regional administrative justice for the Trial Court’s Region 5, where he presides over a range of criminal and civil matters.
Prior to joining the bench, he worked for more than eight years in the Appeals Unit under Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley, and was general counsel in the District Court system’s administrative office for four years.
According to his resume, the Acton resident argued over 90 cases in the Supreme Judicial Court and the Appeals Court while working in Conley’s office. He received high praise from the late SJC Chief Justice Ralph Gants in 2015.
The top jurist said Hillman was “acting in the highest tradition of the prosecutive trade” after he brought to light an omission of testimony that had gone unnoticed, and could have proved useful to defense counsel, according to a 2015 press release. Hillman also spent a year as a Superior Court law clerk after graduating from Suffolk Law in 2007.
Healey tapped National Grid’s senior commercial litigation counsel, Raquel Webster, and Assistant Clerk Magistrate in the Roxbury Division of the Boston Municipal Court Thomas Johnson to fill District Court seats.
Webster has represented National Grid in a range of civil commercial litigation and internal investigations since 2022. For 10 years prior, she was senior regulatory counsel at the company.
From 2010 to 2012, Webster was the senior corporation counsel in the City of Boston Law Department, where she represented the city in state and federal court in tort and employment cases. She also spent seven years as a litigation associate at Bingham McCutchen LLP representing clients in commercial litigation and securities matters.
Webster has also provided restraining order legal advocacy through the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Foundation’s Family Law Project, and volunteered as a foster care case reviewer for the Department of Children and Families and a hearing officer for the Board of Bar Overseers.
Born and raised in Dorchester, she earned degrees from Boston College and Northeastern University School of Law.
In the Roxbury Division of the Boston Municipal Court, Johnson conducts show cause hearings, reviews applications for search warrants, assists judges with managing courtroom sessions, and helps staff, litigants and members of the public navigate the court system.
Prior to joining the clerk’s office in 2014, Johnson served as assistant attorney general in the Fair Labor Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office under Attorneys General Thomas Reilly and Martha Coakley.
Johnson operated a solo practice for a year, representing clients in both civil and criminal matters in the district and superior courts, and was litigation counsel for Liberty Mutual Insurance Company.
He began his career as an assistant district attorney in Worcester County. He earned degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Suffolk University Law School.
The nominees will now be reviewed and voted on by the Governor’s Council.
