Samuel James "Jimmy" Ervin IV (born November 18, 1955) is a North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

 lawyer and jurist who sits on the North Carolina Court of Appeals

North Carolina Court of Appeals

The North Carolina Court of Appeals is the only intermediate appellate court in the state of North Carolina. It is composed of fifteen members who sit in rotating groups of three...

. He served as a state Utilities Commissioner before being elected to the court in 2008

North Carolina judicial elections, 2008

One justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court and six judges of the North Carolina Court of Appeals were elected to eight-year terms by North Carolina voters on November 4, 2008. This coincided with the presidential, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, gubernatorial, and Council of State elections.North...

. He is the grandson of U.S. Sen. Sam Ervin

Sam Ervin

Samuel James "Sam" Ervin Jr. was a Democratic Senator from North Carolina from 1954 until 1974. A native of Morganton, Burke County, North Carolina, he liked to call himself a "country lawyer", and often told humorous stories in his Southern drawl...

 and the son of Judge Sam Ervin, III.

Biography

Ervin was born and raised in Morganton, North Carolina

Morganton, North Carolina

Morganton is a city in Burke County, North Carolina, United States. Reader's Digest included Morganton in its list of top ten places to raise a family. The town was recently profiled in The 50 Best Small Southern Towns. The population was 17,310 at the 2000 census...

, where he lives today. Ervin attended Burke County public schools and graduated in 1974 from Freedom High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Davidson College

Davidson College

Davidson College is a private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina. The college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine, although it has recently dropped to 11th in U.S. News...

, where he majored in history, and he earned his law degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

 in 1981.

Ervin practiced law in Morganton from 1981 until 1999. In 1999, Ervin was appointed to the North Carolina Utilities Commission by Governor Jim Hunt

Jim Hunt

James Baxter Hunt Jr. is an American politician who was the 69th and 71st Governor of the state of North Carolina . He is the longest-serving governor in the state's history.-Early life:...

. He was reappointed by Governor Mike Easley

Mike Easley

Michael Francis "Mike" Easley is an American politician who served as the 72nd Governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina, from 2001 to 2009. He is member of the North Carolina Democratic Party and became the first North Carolina governor to admit to a felony in a deal that halted a lengthy...

 in 2007. The Utilities Commission is a quasi-judicial agency responsible for regulating investor-owned electric, natural gas, telecommunications, and water and sewer companies providing service in North Carolina.

From 2004 until 2007, Ervin served as Chairman of the Committee on Electricity of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC). He has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives concerning the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

In his 2008 campaign, Ervin was endorsed by the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association and The Charlotte Observer

The Charlotte Observer

The Charlotte Observer, serving Charlotte, North Carolina and its metro area, is the largest newspaper, in terms of circulation, in North Carolina and South Carolina...

 before the primary. He came in first in the May 6 non-partisan primary, with 37 percent of the vote. Ervin and runner-up Kristin Ruth

Kristin Ruth

Kristin H. Ruth is a state district court judge in North Carolina, serving District 10 . Ruth was the senior partner in her law firm for seven years before being elected to the bench in 1998. She was re-elected to four-year terms in 2002 and in 2006...

advanced to the November general election. He was again endorsed by the Charlotte Observer for the general election. Ervin won the November election with approximately 53 percent of the vote.