James W. Hendrix is a Lubbock native and a judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas.  He presides over federal civil and criminal cases in the Northern District’s Lubbock, Abilene, and San Angelo Divisions.  He is a member of the Fifth Circuit’s Criminal Pattern Jury Instructions Committee and the Northern District of Texas’s Local Rules Committee. 

Prior to his confirmation, Judge Hendrix served as the Appellate Chief for the Northern District of Texas’s United States Attorney’s Office. He served as Chair of the Department of Justice’s Appellate Chiefs Working Group and as an ex officio member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee.  He regularly coordinated with the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division Appellate Section and the Office of the Solicitor General regarding cases appealed to and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.  

As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, he represented the United States at trial and on appeal.  He helped prosecute Hosam Smadi, who was convicted of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in a downtown Dallas skyscraper.  He also argued over 25 appeals at the Fifth and Seventh Circuits—including two en banc arguments—and served as sole counsel in over 350 appeals.  He regularly taught courses at the Department of Justice’s National Advocacy Center.

Prior to his work at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Judge Hendrix was an associate at the Dallas office of Baker Botts L.L.P., where he focused on complex commercial, oil-and-gas, and intellectual-property litigation.  He began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.