About Deborah Ann
Deborah Ann Hooper trained at Boston College Law School and began her career on the bench of real-world military practice. She earned her J.D. in 1980 after completing a B.A. in politics and sociology at Brandeis University in 1976. Those years set the stage for a legal path that would move between military courts, civilian firms, and local government service.
Her early work was rooted in the United States Army Trial Defense Service. In 1984 she served as defense counsel with the 3rd Armored Division in Hanau, Germany. Two years later she became assistant staff judge advocate and chief trial counsel for the 3rd Armored Division in Gießen, Germany. She continued in senior defense roles at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, in 1988 and at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, in 1989. Those posts involved court-martial practice and trial litigation under military law and gained her experience in high-pressure courtroom settings.
In the 1990s Hooper moved between military and civilian practice. She was an associate at Chapman, Waters & Baxter in Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1992, and opened a private practice in Cocoa, Florida, in 1993. By 1995 she had taken an associate position at Taylor Horbaly & Black in Fayetteville, working on military law matters. The sequence reflects a pattern of alternating roles: trial work, advisory work, and solo practice.
Hooper re-established a private practice in Waynesville, Missouri, by 1997 and later served as Pulaski County prosecutor in 2007. Records show she returned to private practice again in Waynesville in 2011. Her career therefore spans litigation as a prosecutor, defense roles in military tribunals, and long stretches of solo practice in multiple states. That mixture has shaped her approach to courtroom procedure and case preparation.
She is admitted in multiple jurisdictions, including the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, the Supreme Court of Missouri, the Supreme Court of Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the U.S. Court of Military Review, and the U.S. Court of Military Appeals. Bar memberships recorded include the Massachusetts State Bar (since 1984), the Florida Bar (since 1990), the District of Columbia Bar (since 1993), and the Missouri State Bar (since 1997). She maintains a private practice in Waynesville, Missouri, where she handles both civilian and military-related matters.
