Bryan Ray isn’t merely a native of Alamance County; he has the sort of hometown connections that would seem tailor-made for an elected position with a decidedly-local focus like district court judge.
“Six of my eight great grandparents were from here,” Ray went on to explain in a recent interview. “I grew up in Burlington; my family still lives here; and my wife is from here as well.”
As fortune would have it, Ray is indeed about to assume a district court judgeship – being one of the three, freshly-struck district court judges to have emerged from this month’s general election.
Yet, Ray’s election to the district court bench may not have been the forgone conclusion that it looks like in hindsight. In fact, there were times when 37-year-old incoming judge appeared to be heading in a wholly different direction – only to find himself back on the path that would eventually lead to the gavel.
A 2005 graduate of Williams High School, Ray initially left Burlington to attend college in eastern North Carolina. He went on to complete his undergrad studies at UNC-Greensboro, where he received a political science degree in 2009. His next step, however, was a bit of a poser, and it quite nearly catapulted him to a place some 1,100 miles from where he grew up.
“You can’t really get a job as a political scientist,” he acknowledged. “So, it was either a masters of public administration or law, and I was initially planning to attend law school in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”
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In the end, Ray opted for a closer alternative when he visited the campus of Elon University’s law school and fell in love with the setting.
Ray went on to obtain his law degree in 2013, and he soon got a job at a Graham-based law office of Julian Doby, for whom he had interned while he was in law school. Within a couple of years, Ray was promoted to the status of partner, as he worked through a portfolio of cases that ranged from traffic tickets to family law.
In the midst of his regular appearances in family court, Ray settled down to the task of raising his own family. His domestic life properly started seven years ago with his marriage to Caroline, a fellow Elon law graduate who currently works from home managing a legal team at a St. Louis hospital. The couple has since been joined by two daughters – 4-year-old Camryn and 2-year-old Carsyn – whom they’ve inducted into their shared interests, which include annual sea trips, cheering on the Carolina Panthers, and their spiritual pursuits at Trailhead Church.
In addition to honing his skills as an attorney, Ray’s association with Doby also provided the firm’s junior partner with a window into hurly burly of electoral politics. In 2020, Doby, who like Ray is a Republican, waged his own unsuccessful campaign for district court judge. Meanwhile, another one-time law partner – the now retired Keith Whited – had made a bid for superior court judge in 2014, which ended in a similar lack of success for this fellow Republican.
As his colleagues bloodied themselves on the campaign trail, Ray observed the political process from a more rarefied position as a member of Alamance County’s board of elections. Ray first joined this bipartisan board in 2016 as an appointee of the local Republican Party, although the very nature of the board’s role in overseeing local elections effectively required him to take a take a back seat from more overtly partisan activities.
During his time on the board of elections, Ray concedes that he harbored a desire to throw his own hat into the ring. He was particularly drawn to office of district court judge, which initially had four openings slated to come up for a vote in 2024.
Two of the judgeships on this year’s ballot belonged to Democrats with histories of electoral success and were of little interest to an untested candidate of the rival political persuasion. The other two seats had no previously elected incumbents. The first had been recently parceled out by the governor to Democrat Doug Green after the prior occupant, Republican Rick Champion, stepped down to become Alamance County’s first public defender. The other was more or less up for grabs, having been newly authorized by the General Assembly as part of the state budget adopted in 2023.
The GOP’s nominations for the two more readily-obtainable judgeships were quickly snapped up by former county commissioner Craig Turner and Meredith Edwards, the county’s clerk of superior court. In the meantime, the county’s only other seat on the district court bench became unexpectedly available in the opening months of 2024 when long-time judge Brad Allen abruptly retired in the wake of a scandal over his behavior at a bar association Christmas party.
Allen’s departure proved a singular stroke of good luck for Ray, who admits he had already been mulling a bid for the district court bench.
“I was considering running for one of the two other seats,” he recalled, “but once Meredith and Craig stepped forward, I didn’t want to run against them in the primary. So, I talked to my wife about running when Brad retired but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon.”
Following Allen’s retirement, governor Roy Cooper temporarily assigned the newly-available judgeship to Bryan Norris, whose father had been a name partner in the prestigious Wishart Norris law firm. Although he had grown up in Charlotte, Norris was born in Alamance County and had moved back to Burlington, from where had been commuting to his job as a law clerk at the state supreme court in Raleigh.
A few months Ray’s junior, Norris nevertheless seemed like a formidable contender thanks both to inherited name recognition and to a well-funded war chest. Even so, Ray felt he had a good shot at securing this seat given the many connections he had formed during his legal career in Alamance County.
“This was my first go around. and Bryan ran a great campaign,” he acknowledged. “But I had practiced criminal and family law [in Graham] for 10 years, and I ended up talking to a lot of people I knew at the polls.”
All the same, Ray is adamant that he wasn’t fully prepared for what happened when the local electorate went to the polls on November 5.
By the time the votes cast on Election Day had been tallied, all three of the county’s contested district court judgeships had been handily clinched by the Republicans. Even in the race for Allen’s old seat, where some felt the odds had been in the Democrat’s favor, the GOP’s win was decisive – with Ray picking up 53.29 percent of the vote compared to the 46.71 percent that had gravitated toward Norris.
Ray recalls that the news of his victory came as a bit of a shock once the Election Night totals were posted in the small hours on Wednesday due to technical difficulties at the local elections office.
“I didn’t realize until I got a phone call from a friend who had been at the party meeting,” he added. “He told me that I had won, and I kind of didn’t believe it. So, I called the party chair, and she said the same thing. I still didn’t really believe it until I saw the results for myself.”
Ray acknowledged that he’s still getting used to the reality of his new role as a district court judge. Although he has already started to wind down his legal practice, the incoming judge said that he has been spent much of his time since the election in the company of his family. This past week, for instance, he and his wife whisked the kids off to Disney World for a trip they had scheduled even before they knew the results of the vote.
Ray added that he and the other incoming judges will have a chance to prepare more fully for the task ahead when they attend “judge school” in Chapel Hill early next month.
“Come the middle of December,” he added, “it’ll probably sink in.”
See profile stories on other new district court judges:
Craig Turner:
Meredith Tuck Edwards: https://alamancenews.com/juggling-demanding-career-and-family-a-team-sport-for-countys-fifth-judge/
