Champ  Lyons, Jr., Associate Justice
  1998 - Present

Champ Lyons, Jr., was appointed by Governor James to the Supreme Court of Alabama; he was sworn in on March 23, 1998, elected to a full term in the November 2000 general election, and reelected in November, 2006.

Justice Lyons was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 6, 1940. He is the son of the late Dr. Champ Lyons and the late Naomi Currier Lyons of Birmingham. He married Emilee Oswalt of Mobile in 1967 and they have two children and five grandchildren: a daughter, Emily Lyons Soelberg; a son, Champ Lyons, III; three grandsons, Champ Lyons, IV, Stein Erik Soelberg, Jr., and Thomas Lawson Lyons; two granddaughters, Susanna Lee Soelberg and Kerry Elizabeth Lyons. He attends Christ Anglican Church in Mobile and resides in Point Clear.

Justice Lyons attended public schools in Birmingham, graduating from Ramsay High School in 1958. He graduated from Harvard University in 1962, majoring in American Government, and The University of Alabama School of Law in 1965. In law school, he served as Editor-in Chief of the Alabama Law Review, and he was elected to membership in Omicron Delta Kappa and Bench and Bar Legal Honor Society. Upon graduation from law school, Justice Lyons served for two years as law clerk to the Honorable Daniel H. Thomas of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. After his federal court clerkship, he became an associate and later a partner in the Montgomery firm of Capell, Howard, Knabe and Cobbs.

In 1971, through the efforts of Chief Justice Heflin and a bipartisan group of trial lawyers and defense lawyers, the legislature conferred rule-making power on the Alabama Supreme Court. In the fall of 1971, the Supreme Court appointed an advisory committee charged with the responsibility of proposing rules of civil procedure. Justice Lyons was the youngest member named to the committee. He was subsequently asked to serve as Reporter, or the person responsible for coordinating research and drafting rules for review by the full committee. Rules were recommended to the Court in late 1972 and subsequently adopted with an effective date of July 3, 1973. In 1976, Justice Lyons was named to the Supreme Court's advisory committee on the newly created district courts. As chair of that committee, he was the principal author of the district court rules and small claims court rules. He remained a member of both committees for several years and, at the time of his resignation from these committees upon becoming a member of the Supreme Court, served as chair of both. Justice Lyons's treatise on civil procedure, Alabama Practice, published by West Publishing Co., is now in its third edition.

Justice Lyons moved to Mobile in 1976 where he commenced practice with Helmsing, Lyons, Sims & Leach, specializing in complex civil litigation at the trial and appellate levels. In January 1998, he became Legal Advisor to Governor James. Before leaving private practice, he participated in over 60 appeals to state and federal courts. He personally argued approximately 20 cases before the Alabama Supreme Court, approximately 25 cases before the United States Court of Appeals for either the Fifth or Eleventh Circuits, and one case before the United States Supreme Court dealing with an issue of constitutional law.

Justice Lyons is a member and former chair of the Farrah Law Society of the University of Alabama School of Law, where he served as a practitioner in residence in November 1990. He is a recipient of the Sam W. Pipes Distinguished Alumnus Award presented by The University of Alabama School of Law and the Judge Walter P. Gewin Award for service to Continuing Legal Education presented by the Alabama State Bar. Justice Lyons was inducted into the Order of Samaritan by the University of Alabama School of Law in recognition of his lifetime of public service in aiding the underprivileged in obtaining legal services. He is an elected member of both the American Law Institute and the Alabama Law Institute, an elected Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the American Judicature Society. He is a past president of the Harvard Alumni Association. He served as president of the Mobile Bar Association in 1991 and is past president of the Mobile Bar Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Mobile Bar Association. He is a former Alabama commissioner for the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. He has appeared in several editions of Who's Who in America.

During his tenure on the Alabama Supreme Court, Justice Lyons, in addition to writing hundreds of opinions, chairs the committee that led to the adoption of the Alabama Appellate Mediation Rules through which parties are encouraged to resolve their differences through settlement rather than bearing the expense of further adversarial proceedings. Justice Lyons has also taken an active role in improving appellate advocacy through several amendments to the Alabama Rules of Appellate Procedure.

Portrait by Frank Tauriello, American, born 1927 Oil on canvas, circa 1998