James A. Beaty Jr. facts for kids

James Arthur Beaty Jr. (born June 28, 1949) is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, and a former nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Early life, education, and career

Beaty was born in Whitmire, South Carolina. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Western Carolina University in 1971 and a Juris Doctor from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1974. He entered private practice in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1974, and in 1981 he became a judge of the Superior Court of Forsyth County, North Carolina, a position he held until 1994.

Federal judicial service

On August 25, 1994, President Bill Clinton nominated Beaty to fill a vacancy on the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina created by the retirement of Judge Richard C. Erwin. The United States Senate unanimously confirmed Beaty in a voice vote on October 7, 1994. Beaty became chief judge of that court in 2006. He is based in Winston-Salem. He assumed senior status on June 30, 2014. He retired from active service on January 31, 2018.

Nomination to the Fourth Circuit

On December 24, 1995, President Clinton nominated Beaty to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to fill the vacancy created by the decision by Judge James Dickson Phillips Jr. to take senior status. Almost immediately, Beaty's nomination ran into opposition from North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, who was angry that Clinton after taking office had refused to renominate Helms' preferred candidate, Terrence Boyle. President George H. W. Bush had nominated Boyle to a Fourth Circuit seat in 1991, but the Senate never acted on the nomination, and the nomination lapsed with the end of Bush's presidency.

The Senate Judiciary Committee did not hold a hearing or a vote on Beaty's Fourth Circuit nomination during 1996. Clinton renominated Beaty in 1997, but Helms then announced that the court had a light caseload and did not need any more judges. Helms and the Fourth Circuit's Chief Judge at the time, James Harvie Wilkinson III, even lobbied Congress to leave the seat vacant on the grounds that the seat was not needed. In addition, Beaty was accused of being an activist judge because while sitting as a visiting judge on a Fourth Circuit panel in 1995, he concurred in a decision overturning the murder conviction of Timothy Scott Sherman of Hickory, Maryland because one juror had visited the crime scene, according to a February 1999 article in the ABA Journal.

As a result of Helms' opposition, Beaty's nomination again did not receive a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee during 1997 or 1998. Clinton elected not to renominate Beaty to the Fourth Circuit in 1999. Ultimately, Beaty's nomination languished for more than 1,000 days, making it one of the longest appeals-court nominations in U.S. history never to be acted on by the U.S. Senate.

See also

• Bill Clinton judicial appointment controversies
• List of African-American federal judges
• List of African-American jurists