How do judges of the Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of North Carolina / Joined 1998 / Served to 1998

James Andrew Wynn Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

James Andrew Wynn Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1998. He earned a law degree from Marquette University in 1979. He previously served on the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1954 · age 72
Tenure: 1998–1998
Education: Marquette

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1990	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–
1998	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Marquette University	J.D.	1979

Judicial Record

In our data, Wynn authored 302 published opinions for the court (1990–2009), plus 126 dissents and 70 concurrences. Most cited: Nelson v. Freeland (160 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 498 of these were attributed to Wynn by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1998	Nelson v. Freeland†	507 S.E.2d 882	160
2002	Governor's Club, Inc. v. Governors Club Ltd. Partnership†	567 S.E.2d 781	85
2003	Draughon v. Harnett County Board of Education· Dissent†	580 S.E.2d 732	81
2007	Pinewood Homes, Inc. v. Harris· Concurrence†	646 S.E.2d 826	78
2009	In re S.C.R.· Concurrence†	198 N.C. App. 525	64
2007	In re K.A.D.†	653 S.E.2d 427	57
1995	Phillips v. U.S. Air, Inc.· Dissent†	463 S.E.2d 259	55
2003	Draughon v. Harnett County Board of Education· Dissent†	582 S.E.2d 343	48
2005	In re C.J.B.· Concurrence†	614 S.E.2d 368	45
1994	Bost v. Van Nortwick· Concurrence†	449 S.E.2d 911	42
2004	State v. Forrest· Dissent†	596 S.E.2d 22	39
1994	Bromhal v. Stott†	447 S.E.2d 481	39
2005	In re A.B.D.†	617 S.E.2d 707	37
2005	State v. Tutt†	615 S.E.2d 688	35
2004	In re T.D.P.· Dissent†	164 N.C. App. 287	35

Showing the 15 most-cited of 498 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was James Andrew Wynn Jr. on?: James Andrew Wynn Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

Joined the court in 1998. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).