E. THOMAS DUNN, JR. is a licensed legal practitioner in Southern California, with more than 40 years of experience handling criminal & civil trials, civil & criminal writs, appeals, and law & motion matters. The State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization certified him as a specialist in Criminal Law (from 1995-2025) & Appellate Law (from 2003-2024). He is currently a Senior Attorney at Jones Mayer in Fullerton, California.
In 2001, after two decades of public service, Mr. Dunn joined Manning & Marder, Kass, Ellrod, Ramirez in Los Angeles, where he handled law & motion & appellate matters in complex fraud & civil rights cases in state & federal courts. Prior to that, he was a Senior Attorney for the California Court of Appeal in Santa Ana. There, he served as Lead Appellate Counsel in the Chambers of Justice William W. Bedsworth for four years, drafting more than 120 opinions for the court. Before that, Mr. Dunn was a Senior Deputy District Attorney for Orange County, where he successfully prosecuted cases for 12 years, and he served for two years as a Special Deputy Attorney General, representing the district attorneys of all 58 California counties in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California.
As a prosecutor, Mr. Dunn had an exemplary trial record, achieving a 100% conviction rate in all his felony trials. But he is most recognized for his special skill as an appellate lawyer, having begun his legal career by winning his first case—Hicks v. Feiock (1988) 485 U.S. 624—in the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Dunn has many published opinions to his credit, including In re Feiock (1989) 214 Cal.App.3d 141, a seminal case that changed the law to make it possible for single parents to enforce child support awards by way of contempt, & the landmark decision of the California Supreme Court in Tobe v. City of Santa Ana (1995) 9 Cal.4th 1069, where the Court upheld the city’s anti-camping ordinance against constitutional attack. He also won published reversals for his clients in People v. Aldana (2012) 206 Cal.App.4th 1247 [reversing conviction for misappropriation of public funds] & State v. Febuary (2012) 253 Or.App.658 [292 P.3d 604] [reversing conviction due to admission of unduly prejudicial evidence].
Mr. Dunn has served as an Associate & Adjunct Professor at four Southern California law schools, including 21 years at Western State University College of Law’s Fullerton and Irvine campuses. He currently teaches in the online master’s programs in Public Administration & Criminal Justice at Indiana Wesleyan University & at Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio.