From 1893 to 1895, he was engaged in the private practice of law in Greenfield in Dade County in southwestern Missouri.
He was thereafter from 1907 to 1929 the general attorney for the South Dakota division of the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company.
[2] Gardner was nominated by President Herbert Hoover on April 18, 1929, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, to a new seat authorized by 45 Stat.
His service terminated on January 21, 1962, due to his death in Huron, Beadle County in eastern South Dakota.
It was Davies whose orders led to the Little Rock Integration Crisis in which then Governor Orval Faubus made a vain attempt to stop the desegregation of Central High School in the Arkansas capital city.