Jay Karahan

Retired Texas trial judge Jay Karahan became affiliated with The Jed Silverman Law Firm on January 1, 2019 after retiring as Presiding Judge of Harris County Criminal Court-at-Law Number 8 after 16 years of continuous judicial service. He presided over 500+ serious misdemeanor criminal jury trials and managed the disposition of nearly 100,000 misdemeanor cases. Jay was consistently rated in the top 5 of all Harris County criminal judges polled in the Houston Bar Association’s Judicial Qualification and Evaluation polls every two years with votes from practicing Harris County criminal defense attorneys and prosecutors. In 2008 Jay was one of five county criminal court judges who established SOBER Courts (Saving Ourselves By Education and Rehabilitation) to manage restorative probation sentences offered to eligible second-offense DWI defendants. Harris County SOBER Courts are now considered the benchmark for restorative DWI courts throughout the United States. Before Jay was elected to the bench he was the principal attorney in his white collar criminal defense firm Jay Karahan & Associates, PLLC for seven years trying complex and serious securities fraud, drug and drug conspiracy, armed robbery, immigration crime, sexual assault and murder cases in state and federal courts. Jay pioneered the use of expert witnesses testifying in Harris County district courts to cast doubt on the credibility of eyewitness testimony; he obtained acquittals using this novel evidence in jury trials. Jay also won a rare insanity verdict for his client in a court-appointed murder case brought against a Vietnam veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and other cognitive deficits. Before Jay started his law firm he spent four years as Litigation and Compliance Counsel for Cooper Industries, Inc., formerly a Fortune 100 worldwide manufacturing company based in Houston. At Cooper Jay designed and initiated a federally-approved corporate compliance program under the Federal Corporate Criminal Sentencing Guidelines while managing a full docket of nationwide products liability, commercial liability and personal injury cases brought on behalf of and against the company. Jay previously served four years as a federal prosecutor representing the United States of America as Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, where he tried 25 federal jury trials involving bank fraud, bank robbery, witness tampering, perjury, arson, immigration crimes and child pornography. After he successfully prosecuted two Top Ten FBI defendants for an interstate kidnapping and armed robbery crime spree Jay was awarded the U.S. Attorney General’s Special Achievement Award for Sustained Superior Performance. As a federal prosecutor Jay also served as an instructor of Federal Grand Jury Practice at the U.S. Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute in Washington, D.C. Jay began his legal career at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office where he served for three years as a law school legal intern and four more years after graduation as a Harris County Assistant District Attorney. He quickly rose to the level of senior felony trial counsel, he served on the Child Abuse Crimes Committee, and while he was being considered for a district court chief prosecutor’s position he left the office to accept an appointment to become a federal prosecutor, as described above.