Van Cleef worked at the federal courthouse in Tyler while he was still in law school, then stayed on there for years after he got his license.
Van Cleef was born in Fort Worth, raised in Tyler, and has called Longview home for more than 20 years. He earned an economics degree from UT Austin and a law degree from South Texas College of Law in 1992, then spent 30 years practicing trial and appellate law in state and federal courts across East Texas before Governor Abbott appointed him to the Sixth Court of Appeals, Place 3, in 2022. He is now running to keep that seat in a contested election.
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Judges aren't allowed to take sides on these values — it's against judicial ethics rules. The best clue to how a judge thinks is the party they run with.