He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1938, and practiced that year in Toledo, before returning to Chillicothe in 1939 at the firm Simpson and Brown.

[1] Brown left Chillicothe in 1942 to work in Washington, D.C. as a lawyer for the Office of Price Administration.

[1] In 1972, Brown defeated incumbent Republican justice Louis J. Schneider, Jr. for a six-year term on the Ohio Supreme Court.

In 1984, Brown was already more than seventy years old, and was prohibited by state law from running for another term.

[1] After Brown's death, justice J. Craig Wright said : "He was one of the best legal minds we've had on the court in the last twenty years.