Alabama State Bar Lawyers' Hall of Fame

• Jurisdiction: Alabama,United States
• Citation: Vol. 75 No. 4 Pg. 0225
• Pages: 0225
• Publication year: 2014

ALABAMA STATE BAR Lawyers' Hall of Fame
Vol. 75 No. 4 Pg. 225
The Alabama Lawyer
JULY, 2014 The Alabama State Bar recently inducted five new members into the Alabama Lawyers' Hall of Fame.

"The lawyers we are recognizing have improved the communities in which they live, have had a profound influence on our laws and have improved the quality of society by pursuing justice."

- Alabama State Bar President Anthony A. Joseph

The five lawyers inducted into the 2013 Hall of Fame include:

Marion Augustus Baldwin (18131865) Baldwin received his undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Alabama; read law and was admitted to practice in 1836; maintained a law office in Montgomery and was elected 8^th circuit solicitor in 1843; elected attorney general in 1847 when the state capital was relocated to Montgomery; re-elected to successive terms, ultimately serving 18 years to become the longest-serving chief prosecuting officer in the state's history

T. Massey Bedsole (1917-2011) Bedsole practiced law for almost 60 years; served in the Navy during WWII; was a respected community servant who served on the boards of numerous community, church and charitable organizations; served many educational institutions, including the University of Alabama as a member of the board of trustees; was former president of the Mobile Bar Association and active in business affairs both locally and statewide

William Dowdle Denson (1913-1998) Denson was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and Harvard Law School; entered private practice with his father in Birmingham before returning to West Point to teach; as a member of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, served as the chief war crimes prosecutor of Nazi leaders and others responsible for torturing, starving and executing hundreds of thousands of men, women and children at the Dachau, Mauthausen, Buchenwald and Flossenberg concentration camps; tried and successfully convicted more Nazi war criminals, 177 men and one woman, than in any of the other post-WWII war crimes trials

Maud McLure Kelly (1887-1973) Kelly was a lawyer, suffragist, historian and genealogist; was a pioneer among Southern women during the early 20^th century as the first woman to practice law in Alabama (admitted to the bar in 1908); on Feb. 22, 1914, on motion of then-Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, became the...