Joyce Vance

Joyce White Vance is a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law and a Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual For Keeping A Democracy, a legal analyst for MS NOW and the author of the popular Civil Discourse newsletter on Substack.

Vance was the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from August 2009 through January 2017. She was appointed by President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Before that, she served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Alabama’s Criminal and Appellate Divisions, and later as its senior litigation counsel and Appellate Chief, from July 1991 on.  

Before joining the U.S. Attorney's office, Vance worked as a litigator in private practice, first with Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin and Kahn in Washington, D.C. and then with Bradley, Arant (now Bradley, Arant, Boult, Cummings) in Birmingham. Vance is a 1985 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and a 1982 graduate of Bates College, in Lewiston, Maine. She is married to retired Alabama Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance, Jr. They have four children, two dogs, three cats and an undisclosed number of chickens. Vance knits a lot.