Judge Phillip M. Stowers was elected to the circuit court bench in Putnam County in 2008 and re-elected in 2016 and 2024.

Judge Stowers was born in Charleston and raised in Alkol, West Virginia. He graduated from Duval High School in 1978. He attended Morehead State University on a four-year Presidential Scholarship and graduated magna cum laude in 1982 with dual bachelor’s degrees in speech communication and business administration with an emphasis on economics. He has a 1986 law degree from West Virginia University College of Law, where he was a member of the College of Law Moot Court Board and won the prestigious Baker Cup Award for appellate advocacy in 1985. He also was a member of the West Virginia Law Review and authored “Wainwright v. Witt: A New Standard for Death-Qualifying a Capital Jury,” 88 W. Va. L. Rev. 133 (1985).

He began his legal career as an associate for Huddleston & Bolen in Huntington. In 1989, he moved to Charleston and continued in private practice. In 1991, he formed Stowers & Associates Attorneys at Law and primarily engaged in civil litigation there until 2008. He has served as a special assistant to the West Virginia Attorney General and as counsel to the West Virginia State Senate.

Since he has been a judge, he has been temporarily assigned several times to sit on the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia to hear cases in which a Justice was recused. He is the Chair of the Juvenile Justice Commission. He also presides over the Putnam County Juvenile Drug Court, the first drug court in Putnam County, and Truancy Triage, a county truancy diversion program.

He is a past President of the West Virginia Judicial Association and a member of the National Association of Drug Court Judges and the West Virginia Commission to Study the Residential Placement of Children.