James Hamilton Percival, II

James Percival is Florida’s Chief Deputy Solicitor General and oversees all of the State’s civil appellate litigation on behalf of the Solicitor General. Prior to joining the Attorney General’s Office, Mr. Percival worked at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was Counsel to Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand and Senior Counsel to Acting Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio. Before that, he was an attorney at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and clerked for the Honorable Emmett Ripley Cox of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Mr. Percival has successfully argued cases in the Eleventh Circuit, the Florida Supreme Court, and the First District Court of Appeals, Florida’s three most significant appellate courts. His notable matters include defending the Florida Legislature’s power to preempt local firearms restrictions, defending Florida’s requirement that a woman wait 24 hours before having an abortion, and defending Florida’s ban on so-called “sanctuary cities.”

Mr. Percival holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was Notes Editor for the Virginia Law Review. He graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara with a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations.