It was quickly apparent at an investiture ceremony last week that Douglas County District Court Judge Todd O. Engleman hadn’t let his new position go to his head.

Consider the nameplate outside his fourth floor courtroom. It reads “T. Olon Engleman.”

“My wife once asked my mother, ‘Did you name Todd “Todd” because he constantly acts like a toddler?’” Engleman said. “To which my loving mother, she said, ‘No, but now that you mention it, it sure does fit.’”

Naturally, “there was no way I was putting ‘Todd’ outside my courtroom,” Engleman said.

Besides, he added, “I really like my middle name. It’s probably the only thing that’s unique about me other than my beard.”

Engleman did point out that he was valedictorian of his high school class, ranking ahead of the other 12 students.

“Obviously, I don’t take myself too seriously,” Engleman said during remarks last Friday. “I take this position and responsibility extremely seriously, but I try to always bring some level of levity and humor as life’s just too stressful.”

Engleman was appointed in April to the District Court of the 4th Judicial District by Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts.

“That was a very good decision on his part and I appreciate it a lot,” Engleman quipped.

He filled one of the vacancies created by the retirements of Judges Gary Randall and James Gleason earlier this year.

The other judgeship went to Judge Tressa Alioth, the first Black woman to serve on the court.

Alioth’s historic investiture — which Engleman attended — took place at the end of June. Engleman acknowledged there was a good reason that he pumped the brakes on his investiture ceremony.

“It was, ‘wow, groundbreaking.’ All these platitudes,” Engleman said of Alioth’s investiture. “She’s the first, she’s the greatest, and I’m sitting back here going, ‘Uh, what am I going to say?’”

Engleman turned to Alioth, who was sitting among the other judges in attendance last week, and told her, “Thanks for setting the bar.”

“So, if anyone’s wondering why it took me two months to do this after her, that’s why,” Engleman said in his humorous remarks. “Maybe we’ll let it cool down a bit. Maybe I won’t feel so inadequate about all the barrier breakings and everything else that she’s got. It’s like, sheesh.”

Before his appointment to the bench, Engleman worked at Nebraska Legal Group in Omaha, specializing in family law.

Prior to that, Engleman lived and worked in North Platte, where he made his bones in the Lincoln County Attorney’s Office, first as deputy county attorney from 2001 to 2007 and then as chief county attorney from 2008 to 2012.

While working as the prosecutor for Lincoln County, Engleman also served as the county’s acting coroner. In thanking his wife Tiffany for putting up with him, Engleman detailed some of what she had to go through.

“I would leave in the middle of the night, be gone for hours, come home smelling like death,” Engleman said. “Literally, there’s no joke there. I would come home smelling like dead people.”

After Engleman’s up close and personal experience with death, he moved into the private sector, taking a job as associate general counsel with the North Platte law firm of Waite, McWha, & Heng.

While there, he benefited from the “tutelage of esteemed legal scholar Pat Heng.”

“What was that famous legal research tool you always referred me to when I asked you?” Engleman asked Heng, who served as emcee for the ceremony. “It wasn’t Westlaw and it wasn’t Casemaker … it was Google! That’s right, anytime I had a legal question for Pat, ‘let’s Google it!’ Like, I really thought there was more to this law stuff than Googling stuff. But, hey, it worked out for us.”

When the time came to move to the big city in 2016, Engleman discussed it with his family.

“We made the decision to move here as a family, and it was the best decision we ever made,” he said. “I just knew I had to come here and just let people get to know me and maybe everything would work out. And, thankfully, it did.”

Engleman said the reception he received after his judicial appointment was warm and welcoming.

“Every judge has been very generous and very kind to all of us,” Engleman said. “They’ve accepted us from day one, helped us and it’s been very appreciative.”

The only problem was that Engleman had to concede that his other primary defining trait — that is, his beard — did not actually make him unique among judges after all.

“I realized Judge Battaillon’s got a beard,” Engleman said. “So, I’m not unique. Thanks.”