Judge Jerry D. Bullard
Docket 8A of the Texas Business Court’s Eighth Division, in Fort Worth. His standing procedures, revised April 2, 2026, and his written record through July 29, 2026, eighteen coded decisions, are both summarized here, with dates and sources.
Who he is
Jerry D. Bullard was appointed to the Texas Business Court by Governor Greg Abbott effective September 1, 2024, one of two judges named to the new Fort Worth division. On July 29, 2026 the Governor reappointed him, along with every other sitting Business Court judge, to a term running through September 1, 2028.
He came to the bench from Adams, Lynch & Loftin, P.C., where he was a shareholder with more than thirty years of state and federal trial and appellate work, including complex commercial litigation, organizational-governance counseling, and commercial transactions. He is board certified in Civil Appellate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and sits on the Texas Supreme Court Advisory Committee. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Baylor University and a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.
He holds Docket 8A. Judge Brian Stagner holds Docket 8B. The division sits in Fort Worth and covers eighteen North Texas counties; its complete published record, all twenty-four opinions with holdings, is on the Eighth Division page.
His published procedures, arranged by what you are about to do
The court posts standing procedures for each judge. Judge Bullard’s current document is the revision dated April 2, 2026, at txcourts.gov. What follows is a practitioner summary, reorganized around the task in front of you and keyed to the document’s own section numbers. The document controls. Where this page and the PDF differ, follow the PDF.
Before you file anything
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| Within 24 hours of making an appearance, file, under seal, a cell phone number where you can be reached at any time. | § VI.D |
| An initial case status report and a proposed scheduling order are due within 30 days of the first defendant’s appearance, or of removal. | §§ I.A, I.C |
| Word limits follow Business Court Local Rule 5. A request to exceed a limit must be made at least two days before the filing deadline and must show good cause. | §§ II.D-II.E |
Motions and proposed orders
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| Every motion must be accompanied by a proposed order submitted as a Word document, not a PDF, emailed to BCDivision8A@txcourts.gov with the case number and motion title in the subject line. | § II.B |
Discovery disputes
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| Before any discovery motion is filed, the parties must confer on each disputed request or objection. | § III.D |
| The motion must identify which elements of a claim or defense the requested discovery would support. | § III.D |
Hearings and submission
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| For a contested motion, the movant initiates scheduling of a hearing after conferring with opposing counsel on available dates. Uncontested motions may be decided by submission, without a hearing, if the parties agree. | § II.H |
| Submission dates must be at least 10 days after filing. A notice stating date, time, location, and whether the hearing is evidentiary must be filed and served. Hearings are in person unless the judge permits otherwise. | § II.H |
| Exhibits must be marked for identification before being handed to a witness and shown to opposing counsel when offered. | § V.G |
| Electronic courtroom presentations are welcomed when they meaningfully aid the court’s understanding; any outside hardware requires advance coordination with courthouse personnel on security and power logistics. | § VI.F |
Trial settings and the pretrial conference
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| Trial must be set within 13 months of the case’s filing or removal, with a pretrial hearing at least 10 days before trial. | § I.A |
| Once set, the trial date will not move without good cause, even if all parties agree. A continuance request must be in writing, signed by the moving party and counsel. | § I.A |
| A pretrial conference is required, with a proposed pretrial order due at least 7 days beforehand. The conference is held in person absent good cause to appear by Zoom. The judge may also set periodic telephone status conferences. | §§ I.C, IV.A |
Reaching chambers, and staying reachable
| Requirement | Source |
|---|---|
| The court manager may be contacted for scheduling and coordination only; case-specific matters may not be discussed with judicial staff. | § VI.C |
| Any substantive phone or in-person communication with the judge requires at least one attorney from each side present. | § VI.C |
| If a party files for bankruptcy, that party’s counsel must notify the court promptly and in writing, within three days, with case-specific details. | § VI.B |
An older Division 8A procedures PDF still surfaces at a different txcourts.gov URL in search results. The court’s live Eighth Division page links only the April 2, 2026 revision, and that revision is the file summarized above. Check the linked document, not a cached copy, before you file.
His written record: eighteen coded decisions
Across the statewide corpus of 123 published Business Court opinions we coded through August 24, 2026, eighteen carry Judge Bullard’s signature or resolve to his docket. Fifteen bear an Eighth Division caption; three bear an Eleventh Division caption from Houston sittings. The first, 2024 Tex. Bus. 3 of November 6, 2024, was also the Eighth Division’s first published opinion. The most recent is 2026 Tex. Bus. 52 of July 29, 2026. Nine of the eighteen are memorandum opinions.
One attribution caveat belongs up front. Five of the eighteen, 2026 Tex. Bus. 4, 7, 11, 16 and 27, print no judge name in the signature block. We attribute them to Judge Bullard because each sits on an 8A cause number, and in one instance because he signed an earlier ruling in the same cause with a typed name, but that is inference, not what the documents say. The docket letter can also mislead in the other direction: 2024 Tex. Bus. 3 sits on an 8B cause number and carries his signature.
| Matter type | Decisions |
|---|---|
| Removal and remand | 6 |
| Jurisdictional threshold and pleas to the jurisdiction | 5 |
| Summary judgment | 4 |
| Special appearance (personal jurisdiction) | 2 |
| Arbitration | 1 |
Thirteen of the eighteen decide where or whether the case proceeds rather than who wins it. That mirrors the division as a whole, and it is the single most useful thing to know before betting a removal on this docket.
How long a ruling takes
Sixteen of the eighteen recite both the motion’s filing date and the ruling date. Across those sixteen, the median interval was 79 days, the fastest 29, the slowest 278, and the middle half fell roughly between 46 and 142 days. For scale, the statewide median across the 44 coded opinions reciting both dates is 63 days; motion mix drives much of the spread statewide, with summary judgment work waiting a median 104 days against 47 for remand fights. Read those side by side with care: the samples are small, they capture only motions that produced a published opinion reciting its own dates, and the mix of motion types on a docket moves the number.
The statewide corpus itself is catalogued by the SMU Corporate Governance Initiative, whose Texas Business Court Codex is the standing descriptive index of the court’s output and the resource we point people to for court-wide coverage. The procedural computations above, motion-to-ruling intervals and per-judge splits, are ours, built by reading each opinion, and they complement the Codex rather than duplicate it. Method, base sizes, and every division’s numbers are in the performance report; every coded decision, sortable, is in the case tracker.
Four decisions worth reading first
TEMA Oil and Gas v. ETC Field Services, 2024 Tex. Bus. 3 (November 6, 2024). A suit filed before September 1, 2024 cannot be removed to the Business Court. Remand to Tarrant County granted; sanctions against the removing party denied. The division’s first published opinion, and still the starting point on the court’s effective date.
Tall v. Vanderhoef, 2025 Tex. Bus. 15 (April 21, 2025). Company-agreement terms restricting fiduciary duties that would otherwise exist are honored. The individual breach-of-fiduciary-duty claim was dismissed under Rule 91a, and the LLC-expulsion dispute was stayed pending arbitration. If your operating agreement narrows duties, this docket has enforced the narrowing.
Black Mountain SWD v. NGL Water Solutions Permian, 2025 Tex. Bus. 24 (June 30, 2025). The amount in controversy is measured by what has accrued at filing, not by the value of a disputed right over the life of an agreement. The court put the figure at no more than $4.5 million and remanded.
OWL AssetCo I v. EOG Resources, 2025 Tex. Bus. 30 (August 11, 2025) and 2025 Tex. Bus. 47 (December 5, 2025). The same dispute, on both sides of a statutory line. The first decision granted remand: the amount in controversy did not reach the $10 million threshold then in force, and House Bill 40 did not apply retroactively. After House Bill 40 took effect on September 1, 2025, the defendant removed again, and the second decision held that removal timely and proper under the reduced $5 million threshold. Both carry Eleventh Division captions.
Every holding on this page is a paraphrase. Our research read the opinions through a rendering layer rather than the certified documents, so treat these descriptions as pointers. Before citing language to a court, pull the PDF from the court’s opinions list and quote the opinion itself.
He also sits in Houston
Three of the eighteen coded decisions, 2025 Tex. Bus. 25, 30 and 47, carry Eleventh Division captions, and 2025 Tex. Bus. 47 states on its face that Judge Bullard sat by assignment. The statutory mechanism for a sitting Business Court judge to hear another division’s cases is Texas Government Code section 25A.009, which permits the judges to exchange benches; section 25A.014 concerns visiting judges drawn from retired or former judges and does not reach a sitting judge. The opinions recite “by assignment” without naming a provision, and we have not seen the underlying orders, so this page does not assert which mechanism produced any given sitting.
The practical consequence is unambiguous: a search limited to Eighth Division captions misses one sixth of what this judge has written. One record is actively misleading. The court’s file name for 2025 Tex. Bus. 47 carries an 8A fragment, while the opinion’s own caption reads Eleventh Division, cause 25-BC11A-0052. Whether a dispute belongs in this court at all is a separate question; the test is on the jurisdiction page.
Common questions
How fast does Judge Bullard rule on a motion?
Across the sixteen of his eighteen coded decisions that recite both the motion’s filing date and the ruling date, the median interval was 79 days; the fastest was 29 days and the slowest 278. The sample includes only motions that produced a published opinion reciting its own dates, so treat it as an indication, not a promise.
What does Judge Bullard require before a discovery motion?
His standing procedures require the parties to confer on each disputed request or objection before any discovery motion is filed, and the motion must identify which elements of a claim or defense the requested discovery would support. See section III.D of his procedures, revised April 2, 2026.
How do I reach Judge Bullard’s chambers?
Contact the court manager for scheduling and coordination only; case-specific matters may not be discussed with judicial staff. Any substantive phone or in-person communication with the judge requires at least one attorney from each side. Each attorney must also file, under seal, a cell number where they can be reached at any time, within 24 hours of appearing.
Does Judge Bullard hear cases outside Fort Worth?
Yes. Three of his eighteen coded decisions carry an Eleventh Division caption from Houston sittings, and 2025 Tex. Bus. 47 states on its face that he sat by assignment. Texas Government Code section 25A.009 permits Business Court judges to exchange benches and sit for one another; the opinions recite the sitting without detailing the arrangement.
Sources
Primary: Judge Bullard Specific Procedures (rev. April 2, 2026) · Texas Business Court biography · Governor’s Fort Worth appointment release · Reappointment coverage, Texas Lawbook, July 29, 2026 · Tex. Gov’t Code ch. 25A.
Statewide statistics: the Texas Business Court Codex of the SMU Corporate Governance Initiative catalogues the corpus. The outcome coding of all 123 opinions and every interval computation on this page are Kraus Law’s own, and each figure states its base.
Last updated August 28, 2026. Record current through 2026 Tex. Bus. 52, issued July 29, 2026, re-checked against the court’s opinions list on August 28, 2026 with no further Bullard-signed opinion found; procedures current as of the April 2, 2026 revision. Free to cite with attribution. Corrections to hello@kraus.law.
The procedures are the easy part. Whether your dispute belongs in this court is the question that decides everything after it.