State Attorney General John Knox Walkup to Join Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs Law Firm

Business Wire, Jan 6, 1999

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 6, 1999--Tennessee State Attorney General John Knox Walkup, who has served as the state's chief attorney for two years, will be leaving the post to join the law firm of Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, the firm announced today.

Walkup, 51, will serve as counsel in the firm's Nashville office and will be involved in all areas of the firm's statewide legal practice. He will officially join the firm on Jan. 11.

"We are extremely proud that General Walkup has chosen to affiliate with Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs," said Charles Bone, managing partner of the firm's Nashville office. "He is a man of great integrity and consummate legal skills, and we look forward to the important contribution he will make to our firm."

The firm's senior partner in Nashville, Harris Gilbert, a past president of the Tennessee Bar Association, noted, "Under Knox's leadership, the attorney general's office has achieved significant success in assisting victims of crimes, in creating innovative dispute resolution alternatives, and in winning restitution for Tennessee consumers -- including the major settlement from the tobacco litigation. We welcome his leadership, his vision and his legal ability."

"Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs is an outstanding law firm, and I look forward to the opportunity of working with people from across the state and region on a variety of legal matters," Walkup said.

Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs is a regional firm with more than 225 attorneys located in nine offices in Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana. The firm's Tennessee offices include more than 80 attorneys and are located in Nashville, Memphis and Upper East Tennessee.

"General Walkup is a respected practitioner in every courtroom in Tennessee, and he will be a great asset to a firm with a statewide presence like ours," said Tom Dyer, managing partner of the Memphis office of Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs.

Walkup began his legal career in 1973, after graduating from Centre College in Danville, Ky., and Harvard Law School, and serving as a law clerk for the chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court for one year. He was engaged in the practice of law in Memphis before becoming chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee in 1977 under the chairmanship of former U.S. Senator James Sasser, D-Tenn. He left that post in 1981 to become legislative director for former U.S. Senator David Pryor, D-Ark. From 1985 to 1989, Walkup was the chief deputy Attorney General for Tennessee, and from 1989 to 1993 he was the state Solicitor General. He returned to private practice in Nashville in 1993 until he was named attorney general on Feb. 14, 1997.

Walkup is a member of the American Bar Association House of Delegates, the American, Tennessee and Nashville Bar Associations, chairman of the Supreme Court Committee for the National Association of Attorneys General and a member of the Criminal Law Committee and Consumer Protection Committee for the National Association of Attorneys General.

He is married to Betsy Walkup, chairman of the Metro Nashville/Davidson County Board of Education, and they have two daughters Alice and Margaret.