Gov. Greg Abbott appointed former state Rep. Shawn Thierry, who left the Democratic party over its stance supporting gender-transition care for minors, to be a Harris County judge on Tuesday.

Thierry served four terms in the Texas House as a Democrat representing a Houston district, but lost her primary in 2024 after breaking with her party to back bills that barred doctors from providing transition-related medical care to children and teens.

After her defeat, she switched to the Republican Party, where she was warmly embraced. She quickly became the director of political strategy for an international anti-trans policy group, Genspect, and last year, Abbott appointed her to the state’s juvenile justice board.

He doubled down on his support for Thierry on Tuesday, naming her to the Harris County judicial bench. She will hear cases in the 515th Judicial District, which was created by the Legislature last session to address the county’s overstretched court dockets. Lawmakers directed Thierry’s court to “give preference to civil cases.”

On social media, Thierry said she would serve with “integrity, fairness and respect for the rule of law,” and quoted the Book of Galatians, writing, “let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”

Thierry currently works at Texas Southern University as the executive director of policy in the general counsel’s office. She has nearly three decades of legal experience, Abbott’s press release says.

Thierry’s appointment comes as Abbott has vowed to spend significantly to win Harris County for the Republicans. Texas’ largest county, home to one in six Texans, had long been in play for both parties. But in 2018, during the first election after President Donald Trump was elected, Democrats swept the county and dethroned many Republicans, including 59 judges.

Abbott has promised to spend much of his prodigious campaign wealth to “make Harris County dark red,” he said late last year.