TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Dec 23, 2019

Retired U.S. District Court Judge John Trice Nixon died last Thursday in California. He was 86. Nixon earned his law degree from Vanderbilt University Law School in 1960 and worked in private practice and then as city attorney in Anniston, Alabama. He later joined the U.S. Department of Justice as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division. He returned to Tennessee to serve as staff attorney with the state comptroller, as a circuit court judge and as a general sessions judge. In 1980, Nixon was named to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee by President Jimmy Carter. He served as the court’s chief judge for seven years and took senior status in 1998. He assumed inactive senior status in 2016. Funeral arrangements are pending. The Tennessean has more on his life.