Elbert Grady Jolly Jr.[1] (born October 3, 1937) is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
He was a trial attorney for the National Labor Relations Board in Winston-Salem, North Carolina from 1962 to 1964, an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi from 1964 to 1967, and a lawyer for the Tax Division of the United States Department of Justice from 1967 to 1969.
[2] Jolly was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on July 1, 1982, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, to the seat vacated by Judge James P. Coleman.
[2] In July 1986, Jolly wrote the opinion for a unanimous three-judge panel that held Louisiana's law requiring schools to teach creationism alongside evolution was an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment Clause.
[4] In July 2014, Jolly wrote the 2–1 majority opinion in Jackson Women's Health Organization v. Currier, which allowed Mississippi's sole abortion clinic to remain open.