E. Grady Jolly

Jolly was born in Louisville, Mississippi. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Mississippi in 1959 and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Mississippi Law School in 1962. He was a trial attorney for the National Labor Relations Board in Winston-Salem, North Carolina from 1962 to 1964, an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi from 1964 to 1967, and a lawyer for the Tax Division of the United States Department of Justice from 1967 to 1969. In 1969 he entered private practice in Jackson, Mississippi.[1]

Jolly was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on July 1, 1982, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, to a seat vacated by Judge James P. Coleman. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 27, 1982, and received commission on July 30, 1982.[1] Jolly assumed senior status on October 3, 2017.

In July 1986, Jolly wrote the opinion for a unanimous three-judge panel that held Louisiana's law requiring schools to teach creationism alongside evolution was an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment Clause.[2] The decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard.[3]

In July 2014, Jolly wrote the 2–1 majority opinion in Jackson Women's Health Organization v. Currier, which allowed Mississippi's sole abortion clinic to remain open. Jolly stated that a state law which would have shut down the clinic because its doctors were unable to obtain privileges at a local hospital would have violated Mississippi women's rights to seek abortions within their state's borders.[4]

• E. Grady Jolly at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.