Joshua Harold Stein (born September 13, 1966)[1] is an American lawyer and politician who has served as the 76th governor of North Carolina since 2025.

He studied at Dartmouth College and earned his Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School before being elected to represent North Carolina's 16th Senate district in 2008.

Stein left the State Senate upon winning the Democratic nomination in the 2016 North Carolina Attorney General election, in which he defeated Republican nominee Buck Newton by 0.54%.

Out of law school, Stein worked for the Self-Help Credit Union and the North Carolina Minority Support Center.

As attorney general, he worked to eliminate North Carolina's backlog of untested sexual assault kits, the nation's largest.

[31] Stein negotiated a memorandum of agreement with the state's counties that ensured the vast majority of the funds would go to prevention, harm reduction, treatment or recovery.

[33] In 2018, Stein filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court arguing in favor of the Affordable Care Act.

[40] Stein negotiated eight Anti-Robocall Principles with a bipartisan coalition of 51 attorneys general and 12 companies to protect phone users from illegal robocalls.

[citation needed] After the COVID-19 pandemic began, Stein won a preliminary injunction against a Charlotte tow company sued for price-gouging[42] and announced the investigation of nine North Carolina–based sellers on Amazon accused of raising prices on coronavirus-related products, including hand sanitizer and N95 masks.

[47][48] On Super Tuesday, Stein advanced to the general election and faced Republican lieutenant governor Mark Robinson.

[49] After a CNN report on inflammatory and antisemitic comments Robinson had made on a pornography forum, Stein became the heavy favorite.