By: Matt Bruce | nola.com | November 3, 2026
New Orleans voters on Tuesday finalized seats in two parish courts and selected a new constable for the first time in two decades in down-ballot races that drew massive turnout.
Kimya Holmes and Camille Buras won six-year terms as felony judges of a soon-to-be-downsized Criminal District Court, courtesy of a Senate bill the Republican-controlled Legislature passed and Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law this June. Both defended against challenges from other judges seated on the bench, according to unofficial tallies from the Louisiana secretary of state.
Incumbent Stephanie Bridges, state Rep. Candace Newell and newcomer Mike Hall won in races for Civil District Court, while Kristi Boissiere August blew past her lone challenger to become the city’s constable, which handles evictions, serves subpoenas, issues court orders and executes seizures in the city’s east bank.
Most races saw unofficial turnout above 44%, according to the secretary of state.
The results put the finishing touches on the most significant revamp to the criminal court in nearly a century. The court in January will go from 12 judges to nine, a move that is slated to save at least $2 million in state funding by reducing New Orleans’ felony bench. That comes as the city is experiencing historic crime lows and as its population continues to decline.
Rafael Goyeneche, president of the watchdog group Metropolitan Crime Commission, said this is the first time he’s seen a district court marked for scalebacks by abolishing judgeships rather than through attrition.
“The significance is the court is shrinking,” he said shortly before results began trickling in Tuesday evening. “Whoever wins, they’re just going to one of the nine. And the workload for the nine is going to be the same as it was for the 12 judges, which means that fewer judges are handling more cases.”
Buras, elected in 1998, is the longest-serving judge on any court in Orleans Parish. Armed with a cascade of endorsements from politicians on both sides of the aisle, she netted 58% of the vote against Judge Leon Roche, who painted himself as the anti-Landry candidate and netted only 42%.
Roche opted against defending the Section I seat he won in October 2023 after the Legislature made a late change this spring to spare him from the chopping block and after the Section E judge they did ax, Rhonda Goode-Douglas, signed up for Section I. Instead, Roche ran against Buras, and Goode-Douglas went unopposed.
Buras drew from a reserve of more than $215,000 in campaign funds, while Roche’s war chest eclipsed $235,000, state campaign finance records show.
Holmes, the felony court’s deputy chief, also won 58% of the vote in a tense race that pitted her against Court Watch NOLA’s former director, Levine, who won 42%.
Holmes, the incumbent in Section D, told voters she was the judge with the busiest trial docket in the state in 2024 and 2025.
Elsewhere on the criminal bench, incumbent Magistrate Judge Juana Marine Lombard won 54% of the vote against Chanel Debose’s 46%.
This spring, Democratic delegates in the Legislature managed to keep the civil court intact after Republican lawmakers initially proposed cutting that bench down to 10 from 14 judges.
Two new jurists appeared poised to join the Civil District Court’s bench. Newell was perhaps the most vocal critic of her colleagues’ efforts to downsize New Orleans’ courts during the spring session in Baton Rouge. Tuesday, she won 57% of the vote against attorney Warren McKenna III, who netted 43%, to take over the docket left behind by Kern Reese, the civil judge with the longest current tenure.
He and Bernadette D’Souza are both aged out from seeking new terms. Their terms end Dec 31.
Hall netted 65% of the vote against Marie Williams’ 35% to secure D’Souza’s specialized domestic violence and family law court. Hall promoted his experience as a longtime family attorney.
Bridges won 57% of the vote for Division M’s judge, against veteran City Attorney Shawn Lindsay, who clinched 43%.
The Boissiere family will remain in power at the First City Court of New Orleans for another six years. August became the third member of the family voted in as constable Tuesday, with 73% of the vote against local business owner Willie Jones. She will succeed outgoing Constable Lambert Boissiere Jr., her older cousin, who took over from his son in 2005. Lambert Bossiere III was first elected in 1997 during former Mayor Marc Morial’s administration.
August has been a fixture of the constable’s operation the past 26 years and is currently second-in-command.
The brunt of the judicial cuts at criminal court will be absorbed across the felony docket. Despite the looming retrenchment, Goyeneche pointed to the effort to reduce Section J’s swollen docket, which topped 500 open cases last spring when Judge Daryl Derbigny stepped away. By this May, little more than a year later, it was down to 150 cases. The drastic reduction took collaboration between the District Attorney Jason Williams, the Orleans Public Defenders, Attorney General Liz Murrill and the ad hoc judges appointed by the Louisiana Supreme Court to trim the bloat.
More promise came last month in the crime commission’s most recent judicial efficiency report, showing the court managed more cases in 2024 and 2025 but maintained the average time needed to process those cases.
“Orleans Parish can compensate and respond to the new challenge that’s been forced upon them by the downsizing of the court,” Goyeneche said. “It’s not just the judges; they can’t do it by themselves. They have to do it in conjunction with the prosecutors and the criminal defense lawyers.”