Michael Ryan

Michael John Ryan is a judge on Ohio's Eighth District Court of Appeals, elected in November 2022. A Cleveland native, he went through the Cleveland Metropolitan School District and Cleveland Heights High School, graduated from Allegheny College and earned his law degree at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.

He began his career as an assistant prosecuting attorney for the City of Cleveland, then worked in private practice in criminal defense, personal injury, corporate, employment and municipal law. At 30 he became the youngest person ever appointed magistrate of Cleveland Municipal Court. He was elected to that court in 2005 and to the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, Juvenile Division, in 2012, serving about ten years there before joining the appeals court.

In 2015 he published The Least Likely: From the Housing Projects to the Courthouse, a memoir of his childhood in the inner city and his path to the bench. His honors include induction into the Cleveland Heights High School Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame, Allegheny College's Gold Citation Award and the Archbishop James P. Lyke African American Male Image Award.