Walz Appoints Stearns County Attorney’s Office Veteran to Seventh District Bench

(KNSI) – A Stearns County prosecutor who has spent much of his career in St. Cloud courtrooms is headed to the other side of the bench.

Governor Tim Walz on Friday appointed Luke Godzala as a district court judge in Minnesota’s Seventh Judicial District. Godzala will be chambered in St. Cloud and fills the seat left by Judge William J. Cashman.

Godzala currently serves as a senior attorney in the civil division of the Stearns County Attorney’s Office. Before that, he was an assistant city attorney for St. Cloud, where he worked on the Stearns County Drug Court Team, a program that steers defendants with substance use disorders toward treatment rather than incarceration. He also clerked for Judge Leonard A. Weiler in the Seventh Judicial District, giving him a look at the job he is now stepping into.

His resume outside the courthouse is heavily local as well. Godzala sits on the boards of directors for Magnifi Financial and Oasis Central Minnesota, serves as a member director of the Stearns Benton Bar Association, and belongs to Sons of the American Legion Post 46.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of St. Thomas and his law degree from William Mitchell College of Law, now Mitchell Hamline School of Law.

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