• Superior Court Judge Since 2007
• Rated exceptionally well qualified by the Los Angeles County Bar Association
• Supervising Judge of the North Valley Distict
• Named Judge of the Year by the San Fernando Valley Bar Association in 2019
• Named a Judges' Night Honoree by the Armenian Bar Association in 2022
• Assisted in the establishment of the Teen Court Program at Northridge Academy High School

Lloyd grew up in China Lake and Ridgecrest California where his father was a research chemist and later an electronic warfare project manager at the Naval Weapons Center at China Lake. He was raised to be a scientist or engineer, but an interest in economics and political science led him to attend Princeton University where he intended to major in Political Economy.  Lacking funds to stay at Princeton, he transferred to UC Davis. At Davis he chose to study Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning, which was essentially the study of the political economy of environmental issues. Although he was at first interested in working in a state or federal environmental agency, he became inspired to go to law school and become an environmental litigator when he took a class in environmental law that was taught by a lawyer from the State Attorney General’s Office. While at both Princeton and Davis, he was a DJ at the campus radio stations, and was the program director of KDVS his last year at Davis. While at Davis, he also managed a local rock band that went on to record extensively and tour internationally. He also took a quarter off from Davis to run the Tulare County Office of a candidate for Congress.

Lloyd became interested in criminal law in law school after completing a summer internship at the US EPA Office of Criminal Enforcement. After his federal judicial clerkship at the US District Court in Los Angeles, he joined the District Attorney’s Office, hoping eventually to work in the Environmental Crime Unit. At first he felt he would have no problem developing the trial skills needed for that unit through handling general criminal cases because several women he knew had been sexually assaulted and his own mother had been robbed at knife point in a restaurant parking lot. However, despite prosecuting 18 trials to verdict as a prosecutor in West Covina, the DA’s Office and he became disillusioned with each other. His boss wanted him to slavishly follow the DA Policy Manual and expected him to believe police officers without question, and Lloyd had trouble with both of those expectations. While working in West Covina, he was recruited by the head of the local Public Defender’s Office to apply to the Public Defender’s Office. In addition to having beaten him in trial, Lloyd had impressed him by his ability to understand the equities of cases and mitigation evidence in a way most of his prosecutor colleagues could not. While a prosecutor, he participated in a number of successful gang-related attempted murder prosecutions, sexual assault cases and cases involving domestic violence and obtained the conviction of a police officer for committing an off-duty assault with a deadly weapon.

Although he has found work on the defense side to be much more challenging than prosecuting, Lloyd has found it much more suited to his skill set. Lloyd worked in the juvenile Court in Compton before starting an adult felony practice there. In 2000 he moved to Oakland in order to marry and tried his hand at private practice. As a private lawyer he handled adult and juvenile cases throughout San Mateo and Alameda Counties, continuing to defend poor and working people through the San Mateo County Private Defender Program. 

In 2004, Lloyd returned to Los Angeles with twin toddlers and rejoined the Public Defender’s Office. From 2016 to 2018, Lloyd was the deputy-in-charge of the Public Defender’s Public Integrity Assurance Section, the unit that archived and disseminated law enforcement misconduct information in order to help clients dispute charges brought based on the testimony of problematic officers and deputies. In that position he also coordinated the Office’ handling of petitions for resentencing brought on behalf of clients sentenced to 25-years to life under the Three Strikes Law. Four of his clients had Three Strikes sentences reduced, and two were ordered released immediately.

Lloyd enjoys day hikes locally and backpacking in the Sierras. He is still passionate about college radio and still likes to take in live rock and roots music, music that might be performed in either English or Spanish. He prefers small venues, where you might see him with a beer in his hand. He loves playing pickup basketball and has played in games organized by dads from his sons’ school,  DAs, Sheriff’s Deputies, and a Judge, and has played at regular games at the Salvation Army in Compton and at juvenile halls in both Los Angeles and San Mateo. He admits to probably being unhealthily invested in Bruins basketball and the travails of both the Lakers and the Clippers.  He enjoyed coaching his sons’ basketball teams before their skills exceeded his basketball IQ.

Lloyd believes a judge sitting in a criminal court should understand the perspectives and be able to empathize with victims, defendants, witnesses and attorneys from both sides, but that no one who has business in the courtroom should be able to tell from a judge's attitude or decision making whether he or she was a former prosecutor or defense attorney. A judge should appear neutral, and even a party or attorney who is on the losing end of a decision should feel he had been listened to and received a fair hearing.

Lloyd overall respects law enforcement and understands the difficult job most prosecutors do with honesty and integrity. However, he believes that dishonest law enforcement officers and unethical prosecutors are responsible for the lack of faith and mistrust many citizens have in the justice system, and that a judge who ignores or manufactures excuses or explanations for misconduct by law enforcement or prosecutorial misconduct that arises in his courtroom contributes to that problem.

Lloyd believes that too frequently witnesses and jurors are not treated appropriately in the courtroom and their time and concerns should be addressed with more respect.

The Constitution requires that the citizens sent to courthouses to serve as jurors should represent a representative cross section of the community. Unfortunately, the method by which the court assigns jurors to specific courthouses for service does not achieve this, but frequently results in people of color being tried for serious crimes in front of juries picked from panels where members of their ethnic groups and people from the actual communities where the incident occurred are systematically under represented. Lloyd believes a judge should work to ensure that this does not happen in his court and should lobby for the appropriate system-wide changes needed to ensure fair and impartial juries countywide.

The Constitution also requires that jurors not be exused by the Court or by a lawyer in the case due to race, religion, or sex. All too often, lawyers use pretextual reasons to excuse jurors for one of these impermissible reasons. Lloyd believes no lawyer should be able to do this in his court.

Lloyd believes that as long as COVID is with us the Superior Court has an obligation to keep everyone involved in the judicial system as safe as possible. He believes that the Court should follow the guidance of the CDC and the State and County public health officials with regards to social distancing and masking, and should make sure courthouse rules promulgated to implement that guidance are enforced both in the courtrooms and in the hallways and other public spaces in LA County courthouses.