Jessica Lee Thompson was previously an editorial assistant for NorthCarolinahistory.org and for the Nathaniel Macon Papers, a special project of North Carolina History Project. Currently, she is the director of government affairs and general counsel for the John Locke Foundation. Hailing from Stokes County, North Carolina she is an alum of North Carolina School of Science and Math and received her undergraduate and legal degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Jessica received a B.A. in Peace, War, and Defense and a B.A. in History, with an emphasis on North Carolina state history. In law school, she studied North Carolina Constitutional Law under retired N.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert F. Orr and earned the highest grade in the class.

After law school, Jessica went into private practice in Raleigh. Later, she clerked for Chief Justice Martin on the North Carolina Supreme Court. Following her clerkship, Jessica moved to Washington, D.C., where she was a constitutional litigator for six years at the Cause of Action Institute, New Civil Liberties Alliance, and, most recently, the Pacific Legal Foundation. Her litigation practice focused on combatting separation of powers violations at the state and federal levels and defending the constitutional right to earn an honest living.

In North Carolina, for example, she defended a BBQ food truck entrepreneur’s right to the “fruits of their own labor” under the North Carolina Constitution against a small town’s unduly burdensome food truck regulations. Notably, she sued the Governor and State of North Carolina during the COVID-19 pandemic for infringing on a Greenville bar owner’s right to equal protection under the law and separation of powers violations. That litigation led the Governor to change his executive orders treating private bars differently from other establishments that sold alcohol. It helped push amendments to the Emergency Management Act that addressed separation of powers constitutional violations.