He graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1992 with a Bachelor of Business Administration, summa cum laude, and also received the Taylor Medal in Economics, awarded to the top student in the department.

[4] Wilson has been an intermittent member of the Federalist Society, including while at Yale Law School from 1992 to 1995, and then joining the Mississippi chapter from 1996 to 2005 and again since 2019.

President Trump nominated Wilson to the seat vacated by Judge Louis Guirola Jr., who assumed senior status on March 23, 2018.

[12] During his confirmation hearing, some senators asked about Wilson's past comments on social media about President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as his previous positions, as a state legislator, on abortion, LGBT rights, the Affordable Care Act,[13][14] and voting rights.

[15] His district-court nomination—which stalled as the first impeachment trial of President Trump was consuming the Senate and as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning[16]—was withdrawn on May 4, 2020, when he was nominated to the Fifth Circuit.

[8] On March 30, 2020, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Wilson to serve as a United States circuit judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, to fill the seat vacated by Judge E. Grady Jolly, who assumed senior status on October 3, 2017.

In February 2023, with Wilson again writing for a unanimous panel, the Fifth Circuit held that—though the federal statute that prohibits the possession of firearms by people subject to domestic-violence restraining orders (after civil, rather than criminal, proceedings) "embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society"—the statute is unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Court's decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v.