Judge Teresa T. Pulliam is a retired active Circuit Judge for the State of Alabama. She grew up in Huntsville, and is a 1980 magna cum laude graduate of Birmingham Southern College. She graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1983 and began her legal career as a prosecutor in the Mobile District Attorney’s Office, moving to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office in 1986. Before taking the Circuit Court bench in 2005, she had her own private law practice for 14 years. She served close to eighteen years as a Circuit Judge in the Criminal Division of the Tenth Judicial Circuit before her retirement in January of 2023.

She has been an instructor for the National Judicial College in the area of capital murder litigation, and is regularly called on to teach the new judges in the state in this area of the law. She serves as Past President of the Alabama Circuit Judges Association and is Past President of the Birmingham Bar Foundation. She served as one of the two circuit judges statewide, appointed by the Chief Justice, working on the State’s Prison Reform Task Force. Judge Pulliam has been actively working towards prison and sentencing reform in the State of Alabama since 2008. She serves by appointment of the Circuit Judges Association on the Sentencing Commission and is the Chairman of the Alabama Supreme Court Pattern Criminal Jury Instruction Committee. She is a member of the Mayor’s Task Force on Crime in Birmingham.

Judge Pulliam is an active member of the Alabama and Birmingham Bar Associations, serving on the Executive Board of the Women’s Section, and longtime member of the Future Leaders Forum Committee. She has been honored as a Fellow of both the Birmingham and Alabama Bar Foundations
and is a recipient of the Drayton James Award awarded by the Young Lawyers Section. She is a recipient of the NAACP’s Justice Award. She was awarded the Community Impact Award by the Girl Scouts of North Alabama. Judge Pulliam is a member of the board of trustees of Children Village. She is past president of the National Alumni Association for Birmingham Southern College. She is a former member of the Board of Trustees of Living River, A Retreat on the Cahaba and an elder and past chair of the Pastor Nominating Committee at Independent Presbyterian Church. She is a graduate of both Leadership Birmingham and Leadership Alabama. Judge Pulliam is a member of the Rotary Club of Birmingham and has served on the Community Advisory Board of the Junior League of Birmingham, as a sustainer. She has been married for 38 years to Max Pulliam, a practicing attorney in Birmingham. She and Max are proud parents of, Alice Jordan Pulliam, a graduate of her parents’ alma mater, now working for Chopard in New York City.

Since her retirement, Judge Pulliam has been consulting, practicing law, and has volunteered her service as a Circuit Judge, available by appointment for special assignments. She remains active with both the Bar and in her community.