The Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism Presented 2025 Awards

Pictured left to right: Darrin D. Jordan, Hon. Michael L. Robinson, Chief Justice Paul Newby, Robert E. Harrington, Allison Mullins, and James “Jimbo” Perry.

The Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism presented its 2025 awards to five recipients during its annual awards dinner Wednesday, January 21, 2026. This award is presented annually to an individual or individuals whose contributions have demonstrated the highest commitment to genuine professionalism and the highest standards of legal ethics. The award is presented in cooperation with the N.C. State Bar and N.C. Bar Association.

The recipients for 2025 are Robert E. Harrington, Darrin D. Jordan, Allison Mullins, and Hon. Michael L. Robinson. James “Jimbo” Perry was honored with the inaugural Melvin Wright, Jr. Peacemaker Award for his "steadfast dedication to seeking peace and collegiality among the legal community in North Carolina."

Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism 2025 recipients:
 

Robert E. Harrington

Rob Harrington is a shareholder at Robinson Bradshaw, where he represents clients in complex business disputes and spent a decade as chair of the Litigation Department.

In June 2025, he was installed as the 131st president of the North Carolina Bar Association, having previously served on the Board of Governors of the NCBA from 2018 to 2020. In 2015, former Chief Justice Mark Martin appointed Rob to serve on the North Carolina Commission on the Administration of Law and Justice. Bradshaw was president of the Mecklenburg County Bar from 2012 to 2013.

Bradshaw is a life member of the American Law Institute and a life fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He is an emeritus member of the Duke Law School Board of Visitors, having been appointed to the board in 2006. From 2005 to 2007, he was co-chair of the Board of Directors of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He has also served on the Board of Directors of Legal Aid of North Carolina.

Bradshaw was recognized as North Carolina Lawyers Weekly’s Lawyer of the year in 2017. He received the Mecklenburg County Bar’s Julius L. Chambers Diversity Champion Award in 2015, the Duke Law School Alumni Association’s Charles S. Murphy Award for Achievement in Public Service in 2012, and the NCBA’s Citizen Lawyer Award in 2009.

Beyond his legal work, Bradshaw has served as chair of the boards of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, the Arts & Science Council of Charlotte/Mecklenburg County, and the Levine Museum of the New South, among other nonprofit and civic activities. He is a member of the trustees council at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Charlotte and serves as its volunteer attorney.

Bradshaw graduated magna cum laude from Duke University in 1984 and from Duke Law School with high honors in 1987.
Bradshaw is married to Sharon Carr Harrington, and they have one son who lives in Augusta, Georgia, with his wife and daughters.

Darrin D. Jordan

Darrin D. Jordan practices law in Salisbury, North Carolina, where he rep- resents clients in state and federal court with integrity, judgment, and com- passion. He is a partner with Whitley, Jordan, Inge & Rary, P.A., and has been a North Carolina State Bar board certified specialist in state criminal law since 2004. In 2025, he expanded that certification to include federal criminal defense law.

Jordan earned his undergraduate degree in political science and accounting from Catawba College and his Juris Doctor from Campbell University School of Law in 1990. He began his legal career in Wilmington, North Carolina, with Peters, Register & McEachern, and later returned home as an assistant district attorney, serving as a prosecutor in both Cabarrus and Rowan Counties for the District Attorney’s Office before entering private practice. Throughout his career, he has remained closely connected to the daily realities of courtroom practice, where professionalism is personal and accountability matters.

Jordan has devoted significant service to the legal profession. He was elected to serve as the North Carolina State Bar councilor for Rowan County for nine years and later as an officer of
the State Bar. He served as the 87th president of the North Carolina State Bar, guiding the organization through un-precedented challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

He is a long-term advocate for access-to-justice and legal desert initiatives, and the important work of the Lawyer Assistance Program.

Jordan served for seven years on the North Carolina Indigent Defense Services Commission, including two years as chair, where he advocated for the right to counsel and for the lawyers who provide indigent defense across the state. He is also an alternate commissioner on the Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission.

Beyond his formal leadership roles, Jordan has worked to strengthen collegiality within the Bar. For more than a decade, he has organized annual continuing legal education programs in Salisbury and in Western North Carolina at reduced cost to support lawyers across practice areas. He has also brought together lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and defenders in dinner settings throughout North Carolina to encourage mutual respect and professional connection.

Jordan is married to Dana Jordan, a high school science teacher with nearly three decades of service. They have two adult children, Martin and Anna Dupree. When not practicing law, Darrin spends time in Jackson County, where he enjoys fly fishing and working as a part-time guide, pursuits that provide balance and perspective.

Jordan reflects North Carolina’s state motto, Esse Quam Videri, to be rather than to seem. His career demonstrates professionalism practiced consistently, quietly, and with care for the people and institutions he serves.

Allison Mullins

Psalm 139:16 tells us “You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in Your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” Allison Mullins’ desire is to walk the path that God dreamed for her before she ever came to be. She is grateful that He is a loving God, and that through Jesus Christ and His covenant, there is forgiveness. He is a Redeemer who provides a way back to His purpose every time she has taken a detour.

Her path took her from law school at Wake Forest to clerk for the Honorable N. Carlton Tilley Jr. on the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina followed by the Honorable Susan H. Black on the United States
    
Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. These wonderful jurists established standards to govern her career including, most significantly, an unwavering expectation of civility and professionalism. Judge Tilley would say that the legal system provides for the discussion of ideas and personal attacks have no place in it. It was a recognition of the inherent value of each person and, while we advocate for ideas important to our clients, attacking another lawyer is not a proper part of that effort.

In 2013, along with Alan Duncan, Cooper Harrell, and Steve Russell, Mullins founded Turning Point Litigation. The name reflects her desire for clients to find engagement with the firm to be the point at which things turn for the better. Though there is no guarantee that “better” will bring the hoped-for outcome, it can always be experienced in the counseling, support, and guidance through the process.

Mullins had been honored to serve on the North Carolina Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism, the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission, and the Disciplinary Hearing Commission of the North Carolina State Bar, among others. She is a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers.

With her amazing husband, Mike, she lives joyfully at Praying Springs Farm, their 112-acre property in Moravian Falls. Praying Springs is home to cows, chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, dogs, cats, and an ever-expanding number of rabbits. She can attest that “multiply like rabbits” is not hyperbole.

In walking the path set before her, Mullins finds that lasting value is found in the impact of service to others and revelation to people of the truth of the goodness of God. She is most delighted when given the opportunity to speak purpose and encouragement to someone in need of both. She has participated in high-stakes litigation from mass torts to large-dollar commercial disputes to catastrophic injury cases to a high-profile criminal trial. Asked about the most personally impactful matter, Mullins points to pro bono representation of a young woman who, at age 13, was abused by a trusted church volunteer. As a witness advocate supporting her journey through the criminal process, Mullins witnessed the abuser’s conviction but, even more importantly, the transformation of this young woman’s view of herself. Instead of being branded a victim, this young woman sees the truth that she is a hero overcomer. There can be no higher calling in the legal profession or otherwise than to support the restoration of a life and its God-ordained purpose.

Hon. Michael L. Robinson

The Honorable Michael L. Robinson was sworn in as a Special Superior Court judge for complex business cases on July 1, 2016, and has his chambers located at Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston- Salem. He was confirmed to a second term starting July 1, 2021, and was appointed as chief Business Court judge effective January 1, 2025. A life- long resident of Winston-Salem, Judge Robinson received a BA degree in economics from Davidson College in 1977 and his JD with honors from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1980, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif.

Prior to joining the Business Court, Judge Robinson was engaged in the private practice of law for 35 years in Winston-Salem with Petree Stockton & Robinson and with Robinson & Lawing, concentrating his practice for several decades on complex business litigation.

In addition to his service on the court, Judge Robinson served as a North Carolina State Bar councilor from 2009 through 2018, as an officer of the North Carolina Bar Association, and a member of the American College of Business Court Judges. In December 2021, Judge Robinson was elected a member of the American Law Institute. He also serves as an adjunct member on the faculty of the Wake Forest University and High Point University Law Schools. He is married to Wynn Tanner and has four grown children, two of whom are lawyers, as well as nine grandchildren.

James “Jimbo” Perry

James “Jimbo” Stockton Perry was born into a family of lawyers in Kinston, NC in 1955. His father and mother, Warren and Barbara Perry, had met during class registration the fall of their 1L year at UNC, and both continued to practice law throughout their lives. He grew up there with his three siblings where he embraced a “life to the full” while being a star athlete and student.  

Perry attended undergraduate school at UNC as part of the class of 1977. His pre-law advisor assessed Perry'x chances at attending UNC Law to be very low, given that he came to advising without wearing shoes and having very long hair. That same advisor would one day call on Perry during his first day at UNC Law as a 1L four years later. While in Chapel Hill, he met the love of his life, Joan Templeton from Charlotte, NC, who has been his wife of almost 45 yrs.

After practicing with a private law firm and then serving as an Assistant US Attorney in the Eastern District, Perry and his wife moved to Kinston where he joined the family firm Perry, Perry & Perry where he practiced what he has called “small town law” for almost 40 yrs. In addition to his professional law practice, those years have been filled with raising 5 sons and being involved with 16 grandchildren. In addition, he has become known in the community for his involvement in the schools, having consistently volunteered weekly since 1988, as a founding member and elder of Grace Fellowship Church, and in leadership positions with countless community organizations like the Salvation Army, the Boys and Girls Club and the community men’s home for addiction recovery, while also being a part of a core group that started a Christian camp that now serves under-resourced children throughout ENC.  

Among other accolades, Perry was awarded the Kinston-Lenoir County Citizen of the Year in 2021 and the Chief Justice’s Professionalism Award in 2022. In 2023, he joined the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism and began serving as the Executive Director in 2025.  

Perry’s life and career is marked by love of God and neighbor. Among his favorite sayings is, “In all things, keep the end in mind.” There have been many junctures where Perry’s decision-making turned on the hope of living a good life over what is most lucrative or convenient or personally aggrandizing. In his new Commission role, he is enjoying asking lawyers to “keep the end in mind” and to prioritize building people-focused practices in service of their local neighbors.

About the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism

The Chief Justice's Commission on Professionalism was established on September 22, 1998, by order of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. The order established the Commission's membership and major responsibilities. It serves to enhance professionalism among North Carolina lawyers, judges, and law students.