J. Rich Leonard

J. Rich Leonard (born 1949) is the current dean of the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law. Judge Leonard ascended to the job in August 2013. He previously served as a U.S. bankruptcy judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina and was chief judge from 1998 until 2005. Judge Leonard was also a former federal judicial nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Born in North Carolina and a native of Welcome, North Carolina, Leonard earned a bachelor's degree in 1971 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. At Carolina, he served as the president of the Carolina Union, and was awarded the John J. Parker Medal and the Frank Porter Graham awards for outstanding leadership, and the Howard Odom Prize as the top undergraduate sociology major. Leonard earned a master's degree in education from UNC in 1973, and then earned a law degree from Yale Law School in 1976.

From 1976 until 1978, Leonard worked as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Franklin T. Dupree, Jr. He then worked briefly in private practice from 1978 until 1979 with the firm of Sanford, Adams, McCullough and Beard before becoming clerk of court for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina in 1979.

In 1981, Leonard was appointed to be a federal magistrate judge, a position he held until becoming a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge in 1992. In his last year at the district court, Leonard received the first Director’s Award for Leadership in the Federal Courts for his work in setting up training programs for judicial employees. While at the bankruptcy court, Leonard was heavily involved in federal court administration nationally. He served on the prestigious Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management. In that capacity, he oversaw the development of the first electronic filing system in the federal courts and played a role in the development of PACER, the public access system to the federal courts. He also served repeatedly as a consultant for the U. S. State Department to emerging judiciaries in sub-Saharan Africa, traveling to Zambia, Tanzania, Namibia, Kenya, and Nigeria more than 30 times.

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