Holly M. Kirby

In 1995, at the age of 38, Justice Holly Kirby became a gender milestone, the first woman in Tennessee history to serve on the Tennessee Court of Appeals. In 2014, after she had served on the intermediate appellate court for almost 19 years, Justice Kirby was appointed to the Tennessee Supreme Court by Governor Bill Haslam. She served as Chief Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court from 2023 to September 2025. She is the fourth woman in Tennessee history to hold that position.

A lifelong Tennessean, Justice Kirby was born in Memphis and graduated from high school in Columbia, Tennessee. As an undergraduate at the University of Memphis, she held numerous student leadership positions and graduated in 1979 from the College of Engineering with high honors, with a B.S. in mechanical engineering. In 1982, Justice Kirby graduated from the University of Memphis School of Law with high honors and served on the Law Review editorial board as the Notes Editor. Justice Kirby is the first graduate of the University of Memphis to sit on the State’s High Court.

Upon graduation from law school, Justice Kirby served as judicial law clerk to Judge Harry Wellford on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. After her clerkship, Justice Kirby joined the Memphis law firm of Burch, Porter & Johnson, where she specialized in employment litigation, was active in politics and community service, and served on the firm’s management committee. From 1989-1994, Justice Kirby was a member of the Tennessee Appellate Court Nominating Commission, and she served as the Commission’s Chair in 1994. When the Burch Porter law firm selected Justice Kirby as a partner in 1990, she became the firm’s first female partner.

Justice Kirby served the State’s judicial ethics regulatory body during virtually the entirety of her career on the Tennessee Court of Appeals, first as a member of an independent ethics panel and then as a member of the Board of Judicial Conduct, until her appointment to the Supreme Court in 2014.

A career appellate jurist, Justice Kirby has participated in many thousands of appellate decisions and has authored well over a thousand opinions from appeals across the State. From the time of her appointment to the Court of Appeals in 1995 to the present, Justice Kirby has won 6 statewide elections, in 1996, 1998, 2006, 2014, 2016, and 2022.

As Chief Justice, she advocated for funding for crucial improvements to the system for representation of indigent defendants in criminal cases and families in child welfare cases. During Justice Kirby’s term as Chief Justice, years of collaborative efforts among her Court colleagues, the Administrative Office of the Courts, the Tennessee Bar Association, and trial judges and lawyers across the State culminated in the Judiciary receiving two consecutive years of increased funding for indigent representation. The increases totaled over $26 million, with an ongoing commitment to fund an entirely new system for indigent representation.

During Justice Kirby’s term as Chief Justice, she also focused strongly on the exponential increase in threats to Tennessee judges, their families, and judicial staff. During her tenure as Chief, the Judiciary streamlined its protocols with law enforcement, implemented an instant threat report system, strengthened laws on intimidation of judicial officials, adopted measures to remove judges’ personal information from internet sources, and hired a Director of Judicial Safety to focus exclusively on the safety of judges, their families, and staff in the justice system. Justice Kirby continues her efforts to increase understanding of the gravity of the threats to the justice system.   

During her service on the Court of Appeals, in 1996, the University of Memphis chose Justice Kirby as its Outstanding Young Alumna, and in 2002, the University’s College of Engineering chose her as its Outstanding Alumna. While on the Supreme Court, Justice Kirby has received numerous awards and recognition, including the Marion Griffin-Frances Loring Award from the Memphis Association for Women Attorneys, the Distinguished Leadership Award from Women in Numbers, and recognition as Community Mother of the Year by the Tennessee Justice Center. In 2021, Columbia Central High School honored Justice Kirby as its Outstanding Distinguished Alumna. In 2016, the University of Memphis School of Law recognized Justice Kirby as its Special Distinguished Alumna, and in 2025, it selected her as a Pillar of Excellence. In 2024, the Tennessee Bar Association awarded Justice Kirby the prestigious Justice Frank F. Drowota III Award for extraordinary devotion and dedication to the improvement of the law, and in 2025, the Tennessee Bar Association selected her for its President’s Award.

Justice Kirby is married to Memphis businessman Russell Ingram and has two grown children. The family belongs to Idlewild Presbyterian Church in Memphis.