From 1931 to 1933, he was a member of the Arkansas State Highway Audit Commission.
He was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 8, 1939, and received his commission on May 11, 1939.
[1] Lemley was originally assigned to the 1957 Little Rock Integration Crisis.
He granted the school board a two-year delay in the implementation of the desegregation order, but the decision was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Lemley then retired from full-time judicial duties, and the desegregation case passed to Ronald Davies, a North Dakota jurist sent to Little Rock by the Eighth Circuit.