Julian H. Wright Jr., an attorney with Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson in Charlotte, has received the North Carolina Bar Association’s Citizen Lawyer Award. The award will be presented on June 20 at the NCBA Annual Meeting in Wilmington.
The Citizen Lawyer Award was established in 2007 to recognize lawyers who provide exemplary public service to their communities. Honorees include lawyers who also serve as elected or appointed government officials, coaches, mentors or voluntary leaders of nonprofit, civic or community organizations.
In the Charlotte community, Wright is involved with local and state organizations that focus on youth education and recreation. He currently chairs the board of directors of GenerationNation, Inc., an organization dedicated to building civic literacy and leadership opportunities for K-12 students across the community. He also chairs the oversight board for Camp Grier, a Presbyterian camping center in Old Fort, North Carolina.
Wright was appointed by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education to the CMS Equity Committee and chaired that committee for five years. He has also served as the chair of the board of directors of Freedom School Partners, Inc., and as a William C. Friday Fellow of the Wildacres Leadership Initiative. He was a member of Leadership Charlotte’s 23rd Class.
Wright’s practice at Robinson Bradshaw focuses on employment law, business litigation and securities disputes. In employment law, his practice includes the negotiation of employment and severance contracts, counseling and day-to-day advice on employment law questions and litigation of a variety of employment disputes for both employers and executives.
Wright’s commercial litigation experience includes hearings and litigation in forums from state and local administrative tribunals, cases in all divisions of North Carolina’s state (and other states’) courts and extensive federal litigation, including appeals to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. His securities practice involves the representation of clients who are the subject of SEC investigations and his experience includes conducting multiple internal investigations and successfully responding to both SEC informal inquiries and formal investigations without enforcement actions being filed.
A Certified Superior Court Mediator and a Presbyterian Elder with a theological education, Wright regularly represents churches and church professionals in civil and ecclesiastical tribunals. He maintains an active pro bono practice, particularly in the areas of domestic violence protection, landlord-tenant disputes and criminal post-conviction work.
Wright earned his law degree and his master of divinity from Vanderbilt University, where he was awarded membership in the Order of the Coif, served as the editor-in-chief of the Vanderbilt Law Review and was the Divinity School’s Founder’s Medalist. He received his bachelor of arts magna cum laude from Davidson College, where he was awarded membership in Phi Beta Kappa.