Judge Michael D. Lorensen was appointed to the bench in 2012 to serve a circuit that included Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan Counties. He was elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2016. In 2024, he was elected to the new Twenty-Seventh Judicial Circuit (Berkeley and Morgan Counties).

Judge Lorensen is Chair of the Business Court Division and the Judicial Hearing Board.

He is a native of Morgantown. He has a 1981 bachelor’s degree in journalism from West Virginia University and a 1984 law degree from West Virginia University College of Law.

He worked three years as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Charles Haden in the Southern District of West Virginia before practicing law for 25 years in Martinsburg at the firm Bowles Rice. His practice focused on civil litigation, although he also did criminal law and, for seven years, was a member of the panel of court-appointed attorneys in federal courts.

He was a member of Governor Earl Ray Tomblin’s 2014 West Virginia Intergovernmental Task Force on Juvenile Justice and the local rules committee for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. He is a former member of the West Virginia Board of Law Examiners. He formerly served 13 years on the Shenandoah Community Health Control Board of Directors, including two years as President of the Board.

Judge Lorensen and his wife, Maria, have two children.