Howard Clay Hodges Jr.

Clay Hodges was born and raised in Elizabeth City, North Carolina and graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990. He wrote his undergraduate honors thesis on the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education school desegregation case.  After graduating from college, Mr. Hodges spent a year teaching English, bartending, and waiting tables in Europe.  He returned to the United States, lived on a houseboat, wrote a novel, earned a masters degree in English literature, and taught for three years at Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

In 2000, Mr. Hodges graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he won the Gressman-Pollitt Award for Excellence in Oral Advocacy, as well as Best Overall in the Holderness Moot Court Invitational Team Competition.  Following a two-year judicial clerkship with Judge John C. Martin, later Chief Judge, at the North Carolina Court of Appeals, Mr. Hodges joined the law firm of Tharrington Smith.  While at Tharrington Smith he represented school boards in complex litigation in state and federal court.

Mr. Hodges joined Harris & Winfield, LLP in 2004 to focus his practice on civil litigation and personal injury. He represents clients in products liability, personal injury, and other civil litigation. He became a partner in the firm in 2006.
In 2010, Mr. Hodges was designated a “Rising Star” Super Lawyer.

Mr. Hodges is a member of the 2003-2005 class of the William C. Friday Fellowship for Human Relations. Mr. Hodges has taught law in the graduate studies program at Meredith College. He also served as Chair of the Wake County Schools’ Superintendent’s Parents Advisory Council. He has been a volunteer at the Shepherd’s Table Soup Kitchen for twelve years.

Mr. Hodges is married with two children.  As a third grader, his son served as defense counsel for the Big Bad Wolf and obtained an acquittal on charges of the murder of two little pigs.