Sir Roger John Royce styled The Hon. Mr Justice Royce, is a British High Court judge

High Court judge

A High Court judge is a judge of the High Court of Justice, and represents the third highest level of judge in the courts of England and Wales. High Court judges are referred to as puisne judges...

.

Born in Virginia Water

Virginia Water

Virginia Water is an affluent village, a lake and, originally, a stream, the village being in the Runnymede Borough Council in Surrey and the bodies of water stretching over the borders of Runnymede, Old Windsor and Sunninghill and Ascot, England....

, Surrey

Surrey

Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

, he attended The Leys School

The Leys School

The Leys School is a co-educational Independent school, located in Cambridge, England, and is a day and boarding school for about 550 pupils aged between 11 and 18 years...

 and Trinity Hall, Cambridge

Trinity Hall, Cambridge

Trinity Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the fifth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.- Foundation :...

. He was awarded Blue at Cambridge for field hockey

Field hockey

Field Hockey, or Hockey, is a team sport in which a team of players attempts to score goals by hitting, pushing or flicking a ball into an opposing team's goal using sticks...

, and later captained the Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

  county hockey team. In 1970 he was called to the Bar

Call to the bar

The Call to the Bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party, and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received a "call to the bar"...

, Gray's Inn

Gray's Inn

The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns...

, and appointed as QC

Queen's Counsel

Queen's Counsel , known as King's Counsel during the reign of a male sovereign, are lawyers appointed by letters patent to be one of Her [or His] Majesty's Counsel learned in the law...

 in 1987.

He presided over the 2009 Plymouth child abuse

2009 Plymouth child abuse case

The 2009 Plymouth child abuse case was a child abuse and paedophile ring involving at least five adults from different parts of England. The case centred around photographs taken of up to 64 children by Vanessa George, a nursery worker in Plymouth.-History:...

 trial, and sentenced the defendants to Indeterminate Public Protection

Imprisonment for public protection

In the United Kingdom, Indeterminate Public Protection prison sentences are a form of indeterminate sentence...

prison terms, intended to protect the public against criminals regarded as too dangerous to be released when their original sentence has finished.