Judge E. Grady Jolly, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for 43 years, died Monday. He was 88.
“We lost a great American yesterday,” former Fifth Circuit Judge Gregg Costa wrote on LinkedIn Thursday. “He was one of a kind. When I used to receive the new list of annual court sittings, I would instantly smile when I saw I would be sitting with Judge Jolly. I knew I was in for a treat and an education. He had a razor-sharp wit, was a world-class raconteur, and brought uncommon wisdom and judgment to deciding cases.”
“Judge Jolly cared about the law and his views as much as anyone on the court,” said Costa, who is now a partner in the Houston office of Gibson Dunn. “But after arguing his position with aplomb, he would walk out of the conference with his arm draped around the colleague with whom he had just disagreed, telling jokes on his way to toasting the colleague with a cocktail. We need more of that good spiritedness these days. May Judge Jolly’s collegiality and cheerfulness continue to inspire those who were fortunate to know him.”
Judge Jolly was nominated to the Fifth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. The U.S. Senate confirmed his nomination unanimously.
In 2017, the judge took senior status — a position he held for eight years until he went inactive in 2025. Judge Cory T. Wilson replaced Judge Jolly on the Fifth Circuit.
“Judge Jolly was a Fifth Circuit original, with his seersucker suits, mischievous smile and tough, incisive questioning at oral argument,” said Baker Botts partner Aaron Streett. “Judge Jolly’s grilling of advocates often revealed his initial leanings in the case, but he was always open to persuasion, and his opinions reflected careful, balanced analysis of legal questions.”
David Coale, an appellate partner at Lynn Pinker in Dallas, said Judge Jolly “was a kind and gracious gentleman and a dedicated, hard-working judge.”
“While very gracious, he also had no patience for weak positions at oral argument and did not hesitate to say so,” Coale said.
Born in Louisville, Mississippi, Judge Jolly earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Mississippi. He served as a federal prosecutor for five years and then in private practice in Jackson from 1969 until 1982.
“Although typically characterized as a conservative jurist, his jurisprudence was an exercise in even-keeled fidelity to the law, rather than displaying any activist firebrand ideology,” Fishman Haygood appellate lawyer Tad Bartlett wrote on his blog Take the Fifth.
Bartlett cited Judge Jolly’s “notable decision” in the judge’s 1985 majority opinion in Aguillard v. Edwards, a constitutional challenge to the Louisiana law entitled “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction.”
“The statute in essence requires the teaching of creation-science in Louisiana public schools whenever evolution is taught,” Judge Jolly wrote. “The district court struck down the law as unconstitutional, holding that there was no legitimate secular purpose for the Act and that the Act would have the effect of promoting religion. We affirm the district court’s judgment. In truth, notwithstanding the supposed complexities of religion-versus-state issues and the lively debates they generate, this particular case is a simple one, subject to a simple disposal: the Act violates the establishment clause of the first amendment because the purpose of the statute is to promote a religious belief.”
Bartlett’s full column on Judge Joly can be found here: https://takethefifth.blog/2026/03/18/judge-e-grady-jolly-has-passed-away/.