[4] On 27 January 1995, he was appointed to the South Eastern Circuit as a Recorder, a part-time judge.

[3][6] He was a judge of the High Court of Justice (Queen's Bench Division) from 1 October 2004[7] until 2017.

[12] Wilkie sentenced John Darwin and his wife, Anne, in 2008 for faking his own death in a canoe accident.

He concluded that the London Bridge Terrorist Usman Kahn was so dangerous "that the public could only be protected by the imposition of an indeterminate sentence".

This conclusion was overturned by the Court of Appeal under Lord Leveson with the result that Kahn was let out on licence and stabbed two people to death in November 2019.