James R. Layton is the State of Missouri’s principal appellate lawyer. As Solicitor General, he supervises work by assistant attorneys general in all appellate courts. His personal appellate caseload is focused primarily on state and federal constitutional issues, state taxation, and administrative law. In addition, he handles and supervises some trial court matters dealing with constitutional questions. He has argued well over 100 appeals, including 60 before the Missouri Supreme Court and three before the United States Supreme Court. A magna cum laude graduate of Brigham Young University and its law school, Mr. Layton was a judicial law clerk, in private litigation practice in Washington, D.C., and an Assistant United States Attorney before joining the Office of the Attorney General in 1994. He served as President of the Elwood L. Thomas American Inn of Court from its inception in 2007 until 2011, as Chair of the American Bar Association’s Council of Appellate Lawyers, and as President of the Bar Association of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. In 2010, he was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and he was given the Missouri Bar Foundation’s Spurgeon Smithson Award for having “rendered outstanding service toward the increase and diffusion of justice among men.” This year, he will be honored as the “Distinguished Non-Alumnus” by the University of Missouri Law School, where he has taught as an adjunct professor since 1996. He is active in his community as a leader in the Boy Scouts of America and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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