He graduated from Enka High School in 1961, where he was a classmate of Thomas A. Furness III, who is the "Grandfather of Virtual Reality."

Sentelle received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1965.

Sentelle practiced law as an associate attorney with the firm Uzzell & Dumont in Asheville, North Carolina, from 1968 to 1970.

Sentelle served as a North Carolina District Court Judge in Mecklenburg Country from 1974 to 1977.

With support from Senator Jesse Helms, Sentelle was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on July 25, 1985, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina vacated by Judge Woodrow W. Jones.

Circuit, Sentelle served with five future Supreme Court justices: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

(President Trump considered nominating both Larsen and Rushing for the Supreme Court seat currently occupied by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, while Robinson is the first openly gay judge on the federal appellate bench.)

Maureen Ohlhausen (1994–1995) served as a member and acting chair of the Federal Trade Commission.

Circuit, Sentelle was part of two three-judge panels that overturned the convictions of Oliver North and John Poindexter.

2001), Sentelle (joined by Judges Stephen Williams and Judith Rogers) largely affirmed the District Court's finding that the federal government had mismanaged Indian trust funds.

D.C. 48, Sentelle concurred with Judge Arthur Raymond Randolph, relying on Johnson v. Eisentrager to uphold the Military Commissions Act of 2006's suspension of habeas corpus for enemy combatants as constitutional.

In 2004, New York Times reporter Judith Miller refused to comply with a grand jury subpoena seeking documents and testimony about her conversations with a confidential source.

Because of her noncompliance, the District Court held Miller in civil contempt and she spent 85 days in jail.

[10] In National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, Sentelle (with Judges Henderson and Thomas Griffith) held that President Obama's extensive use of recess appointments violated the Constitution, clarifying the President's limited Article II authority to fill judicial and executive appointments during inter-session recesses.

[11] The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed, though a majority of justices declined to adopt Sentelle's precise constitutional rationale.