James Hingeley

James Hingeley served as public defender for Albemarle County and Charlottesville from 1998 to 2016, and he was public defender for Lynchburg, Virginia, from 1991 to 1998. From 1978 to 1991 he was in private practice in Charlottesville. Before entering private practice, he completed a two-year judicial clerkship for the West Virginia Supreme Court. In 2005, he was named a fellow of the Virginia Law Foundation, in 2008 he was named a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at the Harvard Law School, in 2014 he received the Virginia Bar Association's Roger D. Groot Pro Bono Publico Service Award, and in 2017 he received UVA Law's Shaping Justice Award for Lifetime Achievement in Public Service.

Hingeley is active in many professional associations and has served as president of the Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and of the Virginia Fair Trial Project. He was a member of the Board of Governors of the Virginia Bar Association and also served as a member of the Virginia State Bar Criminal Law Section Board of Governors. In 2013 he was elected to the governing board of the Virginia State Bar, serving a three-year term as a member of Bar Council representing the 16th Judicial Circuit. In 2016, Gov. Terry McAuliffe appointed Hingeley to a three-year term as a member of the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission.