Graydon K. Kitchens III, known as Gray, is an American lawyer and the managing partner of Kitchens Law Firm in Minden, Louisiana. He practices in a family firm founded in 1926 by his grandfather, Graydon K. Kitchens Sr., handling personal injury, family law, estate planning, and insurance defense matters.
Background
Graydon K. Kitchens III was born in April 1965 into a family closely tied to the legal profession in Minden, a city in northwestern Louisiana and the seat of Webster Parish. His father, Graydon K. Kitchens Jr., practiced law with the family firm before serving as a judge, and his mother, Roberta Carroll Kitchens, married his father in 1960. He has two siblings, Amy and Allison.
The family's legal roots reached back to his grandfather, Graydon K. Kitchens Sr., who grew up in the sawmill country of southern Arkansas and La Salle Parish before becoming the first in his family to attend Louisiana State University and its law school. Graydon Sr. founded the family practice in 1926, and it has remained within the Kitchens family for four generations.
Education
Kitchens began his college career at Louisiana State University, the public flagship university of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, which his grandfather and father had also attended. He later transferred to Baylor University, a private institution in Waco, Texas, with origins in Texas Baptist education that was founded in 1845. He completed a Bachelor of Arts there in 1987.
He then studied at the University of Mississippi School of Law in Oxford. The university was chartered in 1844 and opened in 1848, and its law school was established in 1854 as the fourth state-supported law school in the nation. Kitchens received his Juris Doctor from the school in 1989, after which he began his legal career in Louisiana.
Kitchens was admitted to practice in Louisiana in 1990 and joined the family firm that year. The firm had been founded in 1926 by his grandfather, Graydon K. Kitchens Sr., who practiced law for more than fifty years. In 1964, when the practice was known as Benton & Kitchens, his father entered law practice with Graydon Sr. The firm was later known as Kitchens, Benton, Kitchens & Black, and Kitchens is recorded there as a partner.
Kitchens later became managing partner of Kitchens Law Firm, working alongside his uncle, Paul Edward Kitchens. Paul Kitchens had practiced in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps at Fort Benning, Georgia, from 1971 to 1975, the legal branch of the U.S. Army, before joining the firm in 1975. Kitchens' practice has included personal injury, wrongful death, estate planning, successions, business formation and planning, family law, and insurance defense.
The firm has produced several judges. Five former partners later served as judges, including Kitchens' father, along with Bruce Bolin, Rick Warren, Enos McClendon, and Cecil Lowe.
Membership
Kitchens is a member of the Louisiana State Bar Association, the integrated, mandatory bar association of the state of Louisiana. The association was created in 1941 under a 1940 state law and a March 1941 order of the Louisiana Supreme Court, bringing Louisiana lawyers under one self-governing body.
The association's House of Delegates, created by a 1957 amendment to its articles of incorporation, serves as its policy-making body and meets at least twice each year. Kitchens served in the House of Delegates from 1991 to 1995.
Louisiana State Bar Association
,
United States
1990 - present
Member
Louisiana State Bar Association House of Delegates
,
United States
1991 - 1995
Connections
Kitchens is the son of Judge Graydon Kelly Kitchens Jr., a Minden lawyer who served as Minden City Judge and as a district judge for the 26th Judicial District, where he became chief judge. After retiring from the bench in 1995, the judge returned to practice at Kitchens Law Firm with his brother, Paul, and his son, Graydon III. His mother is Roberta Carroll Kitchens.
Kitchens is married to Kimberly Bennett. His siblings are Amy and Allison, and his uncle Paul Kitchens has been a long-serving partner in the firm founded by his grandfather.
Father:
Graydon K. Kitchens
Judge of the 26th Judicial District Court in Louisiana and a Minden lawyer who practiced with the family firm.
