Judge Karen Hill Johnson spent her formative years in Belington, attended Barbour County schools, and graduated from Phillip Barbour High School in 1988. She has a 2001 bachelor’s degree in business management and marketing from Fairmont State College and a 2005 law degree from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Michigan.

She was elected to the bench in the Twenty-First Family Court Circuit (Barbour and Taylor Counties) in 2016 and re-elected in 2024.  She took office in September 2016 after then-Governor Earl Ray Tomblin appointed her to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of her predecessor.

Before she took office, Judge Johnson’s legal career as a solo practitioner focused on representing the indigent and juveniles through circuit court appointments. The bulk of her law practice focused on serving as a guardian ad litem for children in family court and in child abuse and neglect proceedings in circuit court.

Judge Johnson and her husband, Jim, have one son and two grandchildren.