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Donald Moran

American judge

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ5294900
Source-derived summary

Donald Richard Moran, Jr. (born August 2, 1945) is a former lawyer and judge in the Fourth Judicial Circuit in Florida for 41 years, including 21 years as chief judge, the longest tenure in Florida history. He was an early advocate of diversion programs for people with substance abuse and directed hundreds of people into treatment rather than jail.

Personal life

Moran was born in 1945 and raised in Kentucky, receiving a bachelor's degree from the University of Kentucky at Lexington in 1968. He has a Juris Doctor degree from the Fredric G. Levin College of Law at the University of Florida in 1973. Moran was admitted to the Florida Bar on October 18, 1973.

Judge Moran married Elaina Moody, daughter of Maxey Dell Moody Jr., in 1979 and they had four children: Richard, Brendan, D'Arcy and Donald III. They reside on the St. Johns River in San Marco.

Their youngest child, Donald III, was severely injured and paralyzed below the waist in 2008 after rolling his truck and being ejected. He was charged with driving under the influence following the accident.

Editorial summary

“Donald Moran” enters the record as american judge. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Donald, Moran and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1945, 1968, 1973, 1979—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1945-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Donald, Moran and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Donald Moran” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Donald, Moran and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5294900. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1945, 1968, 1973 and 1979.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Donald Moran” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.