Gordon Ward

Sir Frederik Gordon Roy Ward is a retired British judge who has served in various Commonwealth jurisdictions across the South Pacific and beyond. He earned a BSc in botany, zoology and geology and taught biology in Northern Ireland before training as a barrister at the Middle Temple and practicing law in London for twelve years. He went to Fiji in 1979 and worked there for six and a half years, then served as Chief Justice of Solomon Islands from around 1988 to 1992, followed by two terms as Chief Justice of Tonga (the second running 1998 to 2004), a spell as a judge in Cyprus in 1995, and the presidency of the Fiji Court of Appeal from 2004 to 2007. He was Chief Justice of the Turks and Caicos Islands from 2008 to 2012 and was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to the judiciary there and across the Commonwealth. He served as Chief Justice of the High Court of Tuvalu from 2001 to 2016 and has held the post again in an acting capacity since 2019.