James T. Giles

The Honorable James T. Giles served as a judge and later chief judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.  President Jimmy Carter appointed him in 1979, and the Senate confirmed his appointment that same year.  He served 29 years until his retirement in 2008.  While on the bench Judge Giles presided over hundreds of cases and hundreds of trials. He managed cases assigned through the Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation.  Those included over millions of asbestos claims in the nationwide consolidated case, In re Asbestos Products Liability Litigation. He was the presiding judge for other complex liability claims via the MDL panel and on his regular docket.  By appointment orders of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, over the course of 18 years, Judge Giles periodically presided over civil and criminal case dockets in the federal District Court of the U.S. Virgin Islands due to judicial vacancies.

Judge Giles served as Field Attorney for the 4th Region of the National Labor Relations Board for a year following law school graduation in 1967.  In 1968, he became the first African-American lawyer in one of the city’s elite law firms, later becoming the first person of color elected to the partnership in that firm in 1975. Initially, he had practiced defamation and slander and personal injury law but then specialized in labor and employment law when an opportunity arose to form the firm’s labor department. Upon leaving the Bench, he returned to law firm practice but soon began to focus on arbitration and mediation matters.

Judge Giles attended the Commonwealth of Virginia’s segregated public schools, graduating as valedictorian of his Lynchburg high school class in 1960.  He received his B.A. from Amherst College and his law degree from Yale Law School.  He is the recipient of recognitions and awards, including the “Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. Distinguished Jurist Award,” the “A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award,” a “Distinguished Advocate” by the Support Center for Child Advocates, and the 2019 “Influencer of Law: Lifetime Achievement,” by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Currently, Judge Giles works as an arbitrator, mediator, and as senior counsel at a major Philadelphia law firm, handling a wide range of commercial matters.  He is a Fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators, the Pennsylvania Chapter of the National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals, and a former Executive Committee board member of the American Arbitration Association and serves on its commercial, employment, and consumer panels.  He is a long time board member of: Beyond Literacy, Inc., a non-profit battling reading  illiteracy; secretary of the Independence Seaport Museum, which illustrates the history of the Delaware River and the Philadelphia waterfront that includes the Underground Railroad;  vice president of the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia, which captures histories that include the U.S. Colored Troops; a Master in the Temple American Inn of Court, and a member of the Historical Society of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Philadelphia.