Georgia’s High Council of Justice (HCOJ), a body supervising the Georgian judiciary, will restart the selection process for a Supreme Court judge after the sole candidate, Temur Gogokhia, withdrew on October 13, a day after advancing to the final stage.
The council had selected Gogokhia for the final stage of the competition on October 12. He withdrew the following day without providing a public explanation. Supreme Court judges are nominated by the HCOJ and approved by the parliament. They are appointed to serve a lifetime term.
Applications for the single Supreme Court vacancy will be accepted electronically from October 15 through November 5, 2026. The position became vacant after the death of Supreme Court Judge Giorgi Gogiashvili on July 8.
Gogokhia has held various senior positions in Georgia’s judiciary. He was appointed a judge at Tbilisi City Court in July 2017 and became acting chair of its criminal cases panel that October. He was appointed chair in March 2020 and took over as chair of the court’s Criminal Cases Chamber in September 2021. He also served as a member of the High Council of Justice from 2021 to 2024.
Previously, he served as a judge and court chair in Poti from 2008 to 2010, Batumi from 2010 to 2012, and Kutaisi from 2013 to 2017. Earlier in his career, he worked in various court administrative positions and as a prosecutor.
His name has previously appeared in media and watchdog reports amid scrutiny of possible cases of nepotism and pro-government leanings in the judiciary.
In 2023, he was among the HCOJ members who publicly spoke out against the U.S. sanctions on key Georgian judges.
Gogokhia’s withdrawal coincided with another development in Georgia’s judiciary. On October 13, Judge Manana Kobakhidze quit the Georgian Constitutional Court, a separate judicial body, after her request to recuse herself from a case brought by the ruling Georgian Dream party seeking to ban several opposition parties was rejected.
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