Attorney Profiles

Jerry Beaver is one of North Carolina's best known and well-respected trial attorneys. He came to Fayetteville in 1973 from UNC law school and began work as an assistant public defender. In 1979, he hung a shingle and soon after was joined by Tom Holt, thus forming the nucleus of the Beaver Holt Law Offices.

During his more than thirty-five years of practice Jerry has achieved many honors and distinctions. He has been selected by her peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America (Copyright 2009 by Woodward/White, Inc., of Aiken, S.C.) for more than a decade and as one of North Carolina's Legal Elite by North Carolina Business Magazine since the inception of the directory

Since 2003, he has been selected for inclusion in North Carolina Super Lawyers, a listing of lawyers made up of 5% of North Carolina lawyers chosen through a rigorous process of polling, peer review and 12 indicators of peer recognition and professional achievement and, in 2008, was listed in the top 100 North Carolina Lawyers who received the highest point totals in the magazine's nomination, research and blue ribbon review process.

In October 2008, Jerry was inducted as a fellow of Litigation Counsel of America, an honorary association of lawyers selected from among only 3% of the national lawyers. He is listed in the National Directory of Criminal Defense Lawyers and has been AV Peer Review Rated through Martindale-Hubbell for almost twenty years.

Jerry is a member of the American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Association for Justice, the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers, and other state and local bar groups. From 1992-2000, he served as a counselor to the North Carolina State Bar, the governing body of all North Carolina lawyers.

He is a frequent lecturer and author for seminars and periodicals produced by the American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers, and the North Carolina Bar Association

He is admitted to practice and has appeared before the United States Supreme Court, the Fourth Circuit United States Court of Appeals, the United States District Courts of the Eastern, Middle and Western Districts of North Carolina, and all divisions of the General Court of Justice for the State of North Carolina, including the North Carolina Supreme Court.

During his years of practice, Jerry has been involved in many of the region's most interesting and eventful criminal cases including representation of Robert Fulton Kelly in the notorious Little Rascals prosecution which resulted in the dismissal of more than 100 separate charges of child sexual abuse.

Today, his criminal practice is largely concentrated in representation of clients charged with serious felony offenses in both state and federal courts, including white-collar prosecutions, wire fraud, bank fraud, Medicaid and Medicare fraud, sexual offenses, drug charges, and crimes of violence.

For over thirty-five years, Jerry has participated in hundreds of personal injury, premises liability and professional liability trials and settlements including his successful representation of Jackson Rock Pinckney, a Fort Bragg NC soldier against international film star Jean Claude Van Damme for personal injuries sustained during the filming of the motion picture Cyborg, a case featured on Court TV.

In the field of civil rights, he received the unanimous opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor (1989), which established a nationwide standard for establishing Fourth Amendment violations in police misconduct cases.

He also served as lead counsel in the precedent-setting Spell v. McDaniel (4th Circuit, 1989), winning a $900,000 jury verdict in a police brutality action which, to this day, serves as a national standard for establishing municipal liability for police misconduct.