Matt Graham

From the Bench to the Bestseller List

Matt Graham is a San Fernando Valley native who grew up in Van Nuys with a work ethic that would carry him through one of the most distinguished legal careers in Los Angeles County history.

After attending California State University, Northridge, and Loyola Law School, Graham embarked on a ten-year career as a state prosecutor. His talent and tenacity were evident early — by age 30, he had successfully argued cases before both the California Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court.

His unlikely rise continued from the prosecutor's table to the Los Angeles County Superior Court bench, where he presided over approximately 200 felony trials. He later ascended to the California Court of Appeal, where he authored more than 1,000 appellate decisions over a career spanning more than four decades.

Now retired from the bench, Graham channels those decades of front-row experience into fiction. His novels in The Van Nuys Courthouse Legal Thriller Series draw from the stranger-than-fiction events he witnessed during his decorated career — the conspiring judges, the oddballs, the misfits, and the moral gray zones that exist behind closed courthouse doors.

His debut novel, Hidden Behind the Robe, earned a 4.6-star rating on Amazon and was named a top award winner in the 2022 Reader's Favorite International Book Award Contest in the legal thriller category.

His second novel, Special Directives, hit #1 on Amazon's list of new legal thrillers within 24 hours of its release in March 2026, earning immediate five-star reviews from readers who praised its authenticity and suspense.