[3][4] He attended Sumner High School in Clinton and graduated as valedictorian with the highest grade point average and ACT score in his class.

[5][7] After working at the Mississippi Department of Public Welfare for almost two years,[5] he enrolled at Syracuse University College of Law, where he received his Juris Doctor in 1980.

[3] Graves has served as a Teaching Team Member of the Trial Advocacy Workshop at Harvard Law School since 1998.

[3] In 1991, Governor Ray Mabus appointed Graves as a circuit court judge of Hinds County.

[12] Obama renominated Graves in January 2011, and the Senate confirmed him on February 14, 2011, making him the third African-American judge on the Fifth Circuit, after Carl E. Stewart and Joseph W.