While serving as attorney general, Ellis, a Progressive, contributed in the reorganization of the Florida Bar, transforming the organization from a simple benefit society to an active group of lawyers, publishing a legal journal and drafting court procedures.

[1] Ellis served a long and distinguished career on the court, with his dissenting opinion for State v. Daniel (1924) foreshadowing what would become gender equality, writing: Eligibility to office does not rest upon considerations of sex, nor does woman’s qualifications for public service rest upon any assumed spiritual endowments, or beauty of soul, nor peculiar faculty for discerning the distinctions, with clearer perception between right and wrong than her male compatriot.While on the court, Ellis served as the President of the Florida Bar from 1919 until 1920.

[11] In 1935, Ellis delivered a speech titled The Spirit of Americanism to the Civitan Club of Jacksonville, Florida.

Since the speech occurred on Confederate Memorial Day, Ellis invoked references to Robert E. Lee to stoke the flames against what he saw was the overreach of the federal government during the Great Depression, breaking with the progressive views of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in favor of the ideals of states rights, which would eventually turn into the Dixiecrat Party.

They had two children, twin daughters Julia Taylor and Amelia Fenwick, and were married until Ellis' death.

[15] Ellis was a member of the Freemasons and the Knights of Pythias, as well as Pi Gamma Mu and Phi Alpha Delta.