Legal Practice Hall of Fame Class of 2024: The Honorable Linda Stephens
For the last seven years, Judge Linda Stephens has been Of Counsel to Hedrick Gardner Kincheloe and Garofalo where she focuses on appellate practice, researching and writing briefs at all levels of the trial courts and administrative agencies, but primarily in the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Supreme Court. Before joining Hedrick Gardner, she was an Associate Judge on the Court of Appeals for eleven years. She practiced as a civil litigator for 22 years with Teague Campbell Dennis & Gorham before joining the Court, served as a deputy commissioner with the North Carolina Industrial Commission for four years, and clerked on the Court of Appeals her first year after graduating law school from the UNC School of Law. Her undergraduate degree is from the University of South Carolina, where she majored in journalism and English, and, in 2023, received the USC Honors College Distinguished Alumni Award.
Judge Stephens’s career includes many impressive firsts. She was the first person in her family to graduate high school and became the first female law clerk to Court of Appeals Judge Fred Hedrick. She became the first female associate and then the first female partner at Teague Campbell. She served as the first female president of the N.C. Association of Defense Attorneys and was the first person to receive the highest awards from both the Association of Defense Attorneys and the N.C. Advocates for Justice. During her years on the Court of Appeals, Judge Stephens earned a reputation of applying the law fairly to everyone and, in her last campaign for the Court, she earned the endorsements of both the Association of Defense Attorneys and the Advocates for Justice. In 2022, she received the Gwyneth B. Davis Award, the highest award given by the N.C. Association of Women Attorneys and, in 2020, she was the recipient of the Bar Association’s H. Brent McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award.