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Make That 20 Of 26 N.C. Governors Who Were Lawyers, Too

By Russell Rawlings

The February 2017 edition of North Carolina Lawyer magazine acknowledged the inauguration of Roy Cooper, a lawyer and member of the North Carolina Bar Association, as North Carolina’s 75th governor.

The article also denoted an impressive statistic regarding the frequency with which lawyers have held this state’s highest office since the establishment of the NCBA. Since 1899, it was reported, 19 lawyers and only seven non-lawyers have served as governor.

Robert Brodnax Glenn, photo courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina

That is incorrect.

Actually, 20 lawyers and only six non-lawyers have held the state’s highest office during the 118-year history of the NCBA. Correcting the lawyer designations in the following list of N.C. governors, derived from the NCBA’s centennial history book, Robert Brodnax Glenn was also an attorney.

He was, in fact, a United States Attorney, appointed by President Grover Cleveland in 1893. Glenn served as governor from 1905-09 and practiced law in Winston-Salem with Glenn & Glenn. The firm traces its history to 1876 and will be more familiar to most folks under its current nameplate: Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.

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