Lauren Zamora, 47, works for the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office in the Conviction Integrity Unit. She’s been an assistant public defender, worked in private criminal defense, and as a child welfare attorney. She’s challenging incumbent Judge Yolanda Huff in the Democratic primary.
Hear from the candidate
1. Please tell voters about yourself.
San Antonio has always been home. My parents taught me and my brother early that giving back to our community is a responsibility and an honor. This is why service is at the heart of my twenty-year law career.
My community involvement focuses on serving people who have been historically stigmatized and marginalized, including people experiencing homelessness and/or mental health challenges. 2026 will be my fourth-year volunteering for Close to Home’s annual Point-In-Time (PIT) Count, a one-night census that gathers information about people experiencing homelessness. I also serve year-round on a volunteer advisory committee that helps inform Close to Home’s coordinated community care work, including the distribution of federal funding. In 2025, Close to Home distributed over $22 million in federal funding to local nonprofits working to end homelessness.
From 2021 – 2023, I served as a Board Member of the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) Texas, which helps improve the lives of people affected by mental illness through education, support, and advocacy.
My community involvement reminds me that justice should be fair, thoughtful, and informed by a deep understanding of criminal law and the human stories behind every case.
2. Describe your educational background.
I am a proud graduate of Antonian College Preparatory, and I hold a B.A. in political science and business administration from Trinity University and a J.D. from St. Mary’s School of Law.
3. Describe your professional experience, what type of law you’ve practiced and noteworthy accomplishments.
I began my legal career by serving as an assistant public defender in Laredo. By representing people who cannot afford a private attorney, I learned early in my career how the justice system disproportionately burdens low-income communities.
I then returned to San Antonio to open my own practice. For 13 years, I focused on juvenile and adult criminal defense, family law, and child welfare law, where I represented children who were victims of abuse and neglect.
In 2019, I joined the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office as an assistant district attorney, trying cases in misdemeanor and felony courts, then representing the Department of Family & Protective Services. Today, I work in the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), an independent unit of the District Attorney’s Office that reviews final convictions to determine whether there have been any injustices or wrongful convictions. I have assisted in correcting 6 of the 22 wrongful convictions on the National Registry of Exonerations.
In 2023 I co-founded the Bexar County Community Court to reduce recidivism and address the root causes of homelessness. Even without an allocated budget or any staffers, this specialty court served over 85 people in 2025.
4. Philosophically, how do you balance the public’s desire for restitution in all types of crimes, while also providing a productive path forward for offenders who don’t pose a danger to the public?
I hold a broad and systemic understanding of community safety. Unlike traditional models of criminal justice that focus on punishment as a deterrent to crime, I subscribe to restorative and transformative justice, which recognize that people involved in the justice system may have both caused and suffered from harm. My approach strives to improve the quality of life for everyone —victims, offenders, and the community at large—by addressing the root causes of crime.
As Judge, I will consider the individualized nature of each case. Understanding that the justice system generates revenue through fines and fees that disproportionately burden low-income communities, I will make informed decisions when setting bonds and emphasize the use of personal recognizance bonds and other non-monetary conditions for defendants who are not considered a threat to the community. I will use alternatives to incarceration which favor shorter, focused periods of community supervision such as the use of specialty courts. Specialty courts connect people with low-level, non-violent offenses to workforce opportunities and treatment programs that help address the root causes of their offense. By completing these alternatives, people are eligible for clearing their records, which helps remove barriers to housing and employment.
5. Why are you seeking this office, and why did you decide to be a candidate in
the political party you chose?
I am a lifelong democrat, and I am running for Judge of County Court 12 because our community deserves a court that is effective, efficient, led with fairness and integrity, and balances community safety while respecting due process. I understand that the systems we need to strengthen to better serve people’s needs—living wages, affordable housing, accessible health care—are interconnected.
County Court 12 includes a specialty court for mental health. One of the weakest areas of our justice system is access to quality mental health care for people with serious and chronic diagnoses. Texas consistently ranks in the bottom of per-capita mental health funding in the country. This results in our county jails acting as the largest mental health hospital because of the lack of community treatment options and funding. I am committed to both the success of specialty courts and an efficiently run court, ensuring cases do not languish for years.
I will use my expertise in criminal law, running a private practice, standing up a successful specialty court, investigating wrongful convictions, and working with people who are experiencing homelessness or mental health issues, to make County Court 12 what it could be and what our community deserves.
