His first job was working as a door-to-door salesman for the Southwestern Company in Nashville, Tennessee in the summers of 1971, 1972, and 1973.
[1] From 1980 to 1981, he served as a law clerk for Katz, McAndrew, Durkee, and Tellen in Rock Island, Illinois.
Holmes was nominated by President George W. Bush on January 29, 2003, to a seat vacated by Stephen M. Reasoner.
In 1980, he minimized concerns about the effect on rape victims of a proposed constitutional amendment banning abortion.
"The pro-abortionists counsel us to respond to these problems by abandoning what little morality our society still recognizes," he wrote.