Legal Legend of Color: The Honorable Patrice A. Hinnant (Ret.)
The Honorable Patrice A. Hinnant (Ret.) is an attorney who serves as a State Bar Councilor following twenty-two years of judicial service, including nine years as a Guilford County Resident Superior Court Judge and thirteen years on the Guilford County District Court. She began her career as an Assistant Public Defender in Greensboro. She is a graduate of Spelman College, North Carolina Central University School of Law and has done additional study at the National Judicial College, the North Carolina School of Government and Shaw University Divinity School.
The Honorable Hinnant served the legal profession as a board member and secretary of the North Carolina Conference of Superior Court Judges for seven years; board member and Vice President of the North Carolina Bar Association; board member and Vice President of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers; President of the Greensboro Bar Association; National Bar Association, past Board member and Judicial Council Chair; American Bar Association Judicial Division and Commission on Youth at Risk; and, Guilford Inn of Court Master. She is currently affiliated with the American Bar Association; National Bar Association; North Carolina Bar Association; North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers: Guilford County Association of Black Lawyers; and, Greensboro Bar Association. She is a graduate of Leadership Greensboro and is a Fellow of the NC Institute of Political Leadership.
She has a pioneering presence in the Guilford County legal community as the first Black female Assistant Public Defender, the first female elected District Court Judge from the Democratic Party, the first Black female and first sitting judge elected President of the Greensboro Bar Association, first Black female Resident Superior Court Judge, and First Black female elected State Bar Councilor. Her presence in each position opened the door for others to soon follow.
The Honorable Hinnant takes pleasure in community service and is currently active with the Greensboro Club of Rotary International for which she is a board member, President-Elect Nominee (2025-26) and Paul Harris Fellow; The Links, Incorporated, past Vice President of Programs of the Greensboro Chapter and past Chair of the Ethics and Standards Committee of the National Executive Council; The Junior League of Greensboro, Past President and Sustainer board member; and, the Greensboro Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, having served as chapter President and on the National Executive Board as Co-chair of the Social Action Commission among other sorority regional and national positions. In each of the organizations, she has received awards for service.
Additionally, the Honorable Hinnant currently serves on the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Board of Visitors and the North Carolina Governor’s Mansion Fine Arts Committee.
Likewise, as a community servant through the years, she has participated on numerous boards including Board of Trustees for Moses Cone Memorial Hospital; Board of Directors for Moses Cone/Wesley Long Community Health Foundation; Board of Directors for the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro; Community Advisory Board for Bankers Trust (now Truist Bank); the Commissions of The Carolina Theatre, Bryan Park and Center City Park, including Chair of both the United Arts Council of Greensboro (now Arts Greensboro) and Youth Services Bureau of Greensboro (now Youth Focus); and other Boards too numerous to name. She has served as a state appointee to the Guilford County Board of Elections and the North Carolina Low-Level Radioactive Waste Authority.
Similarly in the civic arena, she pioneered as the first Black Chair of the United Arts Council of Greensboro (now Arts Greensboro), the first Black President of the Junior League of Greensboro and the first Black Chair of Youth Services Bureau (renamed Youth Focus) and upcoming first Black female president of the Greensboro Rotary Club.
She has traveled on sorority-organized mission trips to South Africa and Swaziland; faith community-organized trips to Israel, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Southern Civil Rights Tour through Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham and Atlanta; Rotary International organized trip for polio eradication to India; Bar organized trips to England, Senegal, Ivory Coast (Cote D’Ivoire), Cuba and multiple Caribbean and Central American countries in addition to personal study travel in Europe. She credits those exposures with expanding consciousness of the human condition, the significance of societal reliance on the rule of law and justice, the hope for peace, and a universal desire to know joy, good health and comfort.
She strives to live a life of purpose and to make a difference in the world. The motto of her college is ‘Our Whole School for Christ’; it was there that she was encouraged to bloom in her native soil of North Carolina, to extend sisterly friendship in collaborations and to give service to various community arenas of encounter.
The Honorable Hinnant, a native and resident of Greensboro, is a Christian and enjoys travel, college and professional sports, old movies, reading, spending time with friends, family genealogy, pet care and ‘piddling in the yard’.