A native of Moss Point, Mississippi, Cory Wilson attended the University of Mississippi School of Business, where he graduated summa cum laude in Economics in 1992. He received a law degree from the Yale Law School in 1995, where he served as a member of the Yale Law Journal.
Following his legal education, Mr. Wilson served as law clerk for the Hon. Emmett R. Cox, United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit. Mr. Wilson then practiced law in Jackson from 1996 to 2008, focusing on business litigation, corporate fiduciary cases, and other business defense litigation. During this time, Mr. Wilson served in leadership roles in a number of bar organizations.
In 2005, President George W. Bush selected Mr. Wilson to join a twelve-person class of the White House Fellows program, one of the nation’s most prestigious programs for leadership and public service. As a White House Fellow, Mr. Wilson served in Washington, DC as a special assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. While at the Pentagon, Mr. Wilson assisted with Department of Defense response efforts to Hurricane Katrina and in the stand-up of a task force to address improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in combat areas. As part of the White House Fellowship, Mr. Wilson also traveled to military installations and policy-related destinations across the United States, Europe, North Africa, and Latin America. He interacted with senior government, business, and policy leaders, across all three branches of the federal government.
Mr. Wilson left private practice in 2008 to serve as Deputy Secretary of State and Chief of Staff for Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. In that position, he handled day to day operations of the agency, composed of over 100 state employees. Mr. Wilson was involved in senior policymaking and helped set agency priorities in areas including elections, securities and charities regulation, business law reforms, administrative procedures, public lands, and legislative changes. Mr. Wilson handled personnel matters, including disciplinary appeals, implemented improved performance metrics for the agency, and had significant input in agency budgets—and budget cuts. He also oversaw extensive efforts to streamline delivery of government services at significant taxpayer savings.
In October 2008, Mr. Wilson staffed five Secretaries of State from around the country on a DoD-sponsored delegation to seven military bases in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Germany to study military voting procedures and develop ways to improve the voting process for deployed servicemen and women. During his three year tenure, he was also frequently the Secretary’s representative in negotiations with senior business and government leaders around the state and the region.
At the beginning of 2011, Mr. Wilson left the Secretary of State’s Office to return to the private sector. His recent matters included representation of several clients in legislative and county redistricting cases in federal court. He joined the firm in July 2011, opening the Firm’s office in the Jackson-Metro area.
Mr. Wilson is a past president of the Downtown Jackson Exchange Club. He serves on the Board of the Mississippi Society for Disabilities and the Board of the Mississippi Council for Economic Education. Mr. Wilson is a 2001 graduate of the Mississippi Economic Council’s Leadership Mississippi Program, where he met his wife, Stephanie. He attends Broadmoor Baptist Church in Madison, where he has taught Sunday School and participated in two missions trips to England. Mr. Wilson lives in Madison County, and writes a weekly column for the Madison Journal.