Before joining the federal appeals bench, R. Guy Cole Jr. spent six years as a bankruptcy judge in the Southern District of Ohio, from 1987 to 1993. His earlier work included trial practice in the commercial-litigation branch of the Justice Department's Civil Division and private practice at Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease in Columbus, where he became the firm's first African American partner.
Cole was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1951 and graduated from Tufts University in 1972 and Yale Law School in 1975. Nominated by President Bill Clinton, he joined the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 1995. In August 2014, he became the court's chief judge, the first African American to hold that position in the court's history, and served until 2021. The colleagues who nominated him for a judicial award, led by Judge Richard Allen Griffin, wrote that he "has conducted himself with the highest degree of character and integrity," and credited his leadership of the court through the COVID-19 pandemic, the employee-appreciation program he created, the elimination of its case backlog and the restoration of its collegiality. He now serves on the court in senior status.
Alongside his judicial work, Cole has taught as an adjunct professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law since 2010 and held leadership roles in community organizations, including service as vice chair of the board of Ohio State's James Cancer Hospital and positions with Columbus Children's Hospital, the March of Dimes, the YMCA and I Know I Can, a program that helps Columbus public-school students reach college. Tufts awarded him its Distinguished Achievement Award in 2016. In 2021, the American Inns of Court selected him for its Sixth Circuit Professionalism Award, and the American College of Bankruptcy lists him in its directory in recognition of his years in bankruptcy practice.
