James Carter, Jr., Vice-Chairman is an accomplished attorney, educator, statesman and author. He is the Managing Partner of The Cochran Firm-Trials & Mass Torts and has been admitted to practice in all Louisiana state courts, all Louisiana U.S. District courts, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Carter has been recognized by New Orleans City Business Magazine as a Leader in Law in 2012 and 2016. In 2021, along with three Supreme Court Justices, he was recognized by Law Dragon 500 for excellence in the legal profession, and was also inducted into the elite Litigation Counsel of America, which includes less than one half of one percent of North American lawyers, judges and scholars.
As a public servant, he was elected to and served from 2006 to 2010 on the first New Orleans City Council seated after Hurricane Katrina. Noted for his experience in understanding holistic criminal justice reform and economic development, Carter was appointed the first African American Criminal Justice Commissioner in the city’s history.
Carter is a lecturer and adjunct professor of law. He is a Civil Trial Litigation Adjunct Professor at Howard University School of Law and sits on the Howard University’s School of Law Board of Visitors. He has served as a Trial Advocacy Adjunct Professor at Tulane University School of Law, and is the immediate past chairman of the University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors. He is also a participant in a multi-year study of leadership in divided communities at The University of Oxford, Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict. He has lectured in England, Canada, Panama, Jamaica and across the United States.
Carter received his undergraduate degree from Howard University and then went on to graduate from Howard University School of Law. He has also been awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degree by Grambling State University and received a prized certification in litigation from the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke University School of Law.