Deborah H. Karalunas

Deborah H. Karalunas is a United States judge serving on the trial level New York Supreme Court in Onondaga County. She has been a justice on that court since being elected in 2002, and in 2023 she became the first female Administrative Judge for the 5th Judicial District of the New York Supreme Court (still holding that position as of July 2024). She has been the President of the Association of Justices of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, and received that association's Justice Martin J. Evans Award for Judicial Excellence and Leadership, among other awards during her career.

Judicial service
In 2002, Karalunas was elected as a trial level New York Supreme Court justice in the 5th Judicial District, which includes Herkimer, Jefferson, Lewis, Oneida, Onondaga and Oswego Counties. Karalunas sits in Syracuse, Onandaga County, New York. In 2007, she was appointed as the presiding justice in the New York Commercial Division of Onondaga County, a specialized business court. She was reelected to a second 14-year term in 2016.

On July 10, 2023, while still serving as a business court judge in the Commercial Division, she was appointed Administrative Judge of the 5th Judicial District by New York's Chief Administrative Judge Joseph A. Zayas, succeeding Judge James P. Murphy. Karalunas was the first woman ever appointed to this position. At the time of her original election to the 5th Judicial District in 2002, she was only the third woman to hold that position.

Judicial law clerk
In 1982–1983, Karalunas was a judicial law clerk for Judge Howard G. Munson of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York.

Private Legal Practice
Karalunas was in private legal practice in Syracuse from 1983 to 2002, at the law firm of Bond, Schoeneck & King, where she became a law partner in that firm.

Education
Karalunas received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1978, and her Juris Doctor degree, cum laude, from Syracuse University College of Law in 1982.

Author and educator
She has served as an adjunct professor at the Syracuse University School of Law, where she teaches New York Civil Practice. She is on the faculty of the New York State Bar Association's Young Lawyers Trial Academy.

She has been a chapter author in the legal treatise, Commercial Litigation in New York State Courts.

Awards
In 2024, the New York State Bar Association presented Karalunas with its Advancement of Judicial Diversity Award.

In 2022, she received the Association of Justices of the Supreme Court of the State of New York's Justice Martin J. Evans Award for Judicial Excellence and Leadership.

In 2018, she was the Public Service Honoree of the Armenian Bar Association.

In 2017, Karalunas received the inaugural Karen DeCrow Award from the Central New York Women's Bar Association, which honors those advancing the principle that civil rights are human rights that should be extended to all.

In 2009, Karalunas received the Syracuse University College of Law Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.

Positions
Karalunas has held the following positions, among others:

President of the Association of Justices of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

Chair of the 5th Judicial District Women in the Courts Committee.

President, Board of Directors for the Central New York Women's Bar Association.

In 2017, she was appointed to the New York State Committee on Pattern Jury Instructions.