Family Court Judge Randal Minor was born in Morgantown. He has a 1978 bachelor’s degree in accounting and a 1981 law degree from West Virginia University, where he was a member of the Law Review and played on the University rugby team.

Judge Minor was elected to the bench in 2008 in the Twentieth Family Court Circuit (Monongalia and Preston Counties) and re-elected in 2016. He previously served as a Magistrate in Monongalia County in 1984.

Immediately before becoming a Family Court Judge, Judge Minor was the director of the Appalachian Center for Law and Public Service at West Virginia University College of Law. For fifteen years he coordinated public service opportunities for law students while providing free legal services to needy individuals throughout a five-county area.

Before coming back to West Virginia in 1994, Judge Minor worked for ten years in Washington, D.C., where he was a law school clinician at Antioch School of Law, a managing attorney of a neighborhood Legal Aid office, and most recently was the director of pro bono programs for the District of Columbia Bar Association. At the beginning of his career, Judge Minor worked in private practice with attorneys Allan Karlin and Regina Charon in Morgantown.

Judge Minor and his wife, Janine Breyel, have four sons who have been very active in sports, music, and theatre. Judge Minor and his wife have coached teams, and have driven many miles in support of their children’s activities. The family loves to travel, and together or individually they have travelled throughout the United States and visited a number of other countries on four continents.