Judge Theresa Cogar Turner was elected to the bench in the Seventeenth Family Court Circuit (Braxton, Lewis, and Upshur Counties) in 2016. She was re-elected in 2024 to a newly configured Seventeenth Family Court Circuit that contains only Lewis and Upshur Counties.

Judge Turner is a native of Lewis County. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science from West Virginia University and a law degree from West Virginia University College of Law.

She previously was an assistant public defender in Kanawha County from 2000 to 2005 and in Harrison County in 2006. She was a Child Support Attorney for the West Virginia Bureau for Child Support Enforcement from 2006 to 2014 and then served as an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in Lewis County.

She lives in Weston with her husband, Jamie, and two sons.