Gerald Bard Tjoflat

Gerald Bard Tjoflat (born December 6, 1929) is an American lawyer and Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He previously served as a U.S. district judge on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida from 1970 to 1975 and as a state court judge on the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida from 1968 to 1970. Education and career Tjoflat was born in 1929 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father was of Norwegian ancestry, and his mother was an immigrant from Chile. Tjoflat attended the University of Virginia on a baseball scholarship. After two years, financial constraints forced him to transfer to the University of Cincinnati, where he completed his undergraduate degree. Tjoflat then enrolled in the University of Cincinnati College of Law, but he was drafted into the U.S. Army at the end of his first semester. He served in the Army until 1955, attaining the rank of corporal. After leaving the Army, Tjoflat returned to Cincinnati and completed his first year of law school. He then transferred to the Duke University School of Law, graduating in 1957 with a Bachelor of Laws. Tjoflat was in private practice in Jacksonville, Florida from 1957 to 1968 and served as a judge of the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida in Jacksonville from 1968 to 1970.