Sign In
Upcoming Event
Free Newsletter
DEAN AND TRUSTEE PROFESSOR, WILLIAM & MARY LAW SCHOOL, WILLIAMSBURG
DEAN AND TRUSTEE PROFESSOR, WILLIAM & MARY LAW SCHOOL, WILLIAMSBURG
Virginia Business// August 29, 2024//
James Randolph Spencer was the first Black federal judge in Virginia and, later, the first Black chief judge serving on the Eastern District of Virginia bench. His wife, Margaret P. Spencer, was a 13th Judicial Circuit judge for 16 years, as well as a law professor at William & Mary.
Their son Benjamin Spencer is clearly a case of the apple that didn’t fall far from the tree. He became William & Mary’s first-ever Black dean in 2020, and last year, Spencer was promoted to major in the U.S. Army Reserve’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, in which his father also served.
In a November 2023 opinion piece for Bloomberg Law, the Harvard Law grad wrote that diversity hiring programs have always been flawed. Instead of addressing root factors, “diversity programs became an add-on or a safety valve that allowed firms to create the diversity that their general hiring process failed to deliver,” he wrote.
A former member of the U.S. Courts Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, Spencer was hired in September 2023 as a part-time of counsel attorney at McGuireWoods.
-
