He graduated from Denham Springs High School, at which he participated in four sports and was his class salutatorian and a National Merit Scholarship finalist. He attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge on an academic scholarship and received a Bachelor of Arts in History with honors.
Hughes was reared in Denham Springs in Livingston Parish, Louisiana. At the Louisiana State University Law Center, he worked on The Louisiana Law Review. After time as a clerk for Judge Frank Polozola of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, he worked in private practice in Baton Rouge with the firm of Adcock, Dupree, and Shows.
He then practiced solo and subsequently became the first attorney to practice in Walker in Livingston Parish.
After twelve years of private practice he was elected in 1990 as a Democrat to the 21st Judicial District Court (Division F) on which he served for fourteen years. He succeeded another Democrat, Joseph East. "Joe Eddie" Anzalone, Junior.
(1935-2010) of Hamond in Tangipahoa Parish. He was last elected to the district court in a runoff election in 2002 with fellow Republican Robert H. Harrison, Junior.
In that race, Hughes polled 31,042 votes (615 percent) to Harrison"s 19,436 (385 percent).
In 2004, Hughes, with four year remaining in his district court term, was elected to the Louisiana Court of Appeal for the First Circuit, on which he sat for eight years. In that contest, as a Republican candidate, Hughes unseated the incumbent Republican judge, Brady M. Fitzsimmons, 41,926 votes (514 percent) to 39,670 (486 percent). Elected to the Louisiana Supreme Court in 2012, Hughes defeated the Democrat John Michael Guidry, an African-American judge of the First Circuit, Second District, appeal court who formerly served in both the Louisiana House of Representatives and the Louisiana State Senate.
In the nonpartisan blanket primary, Guidry led the eight-candidate field with 93,119 votes (275 percent).
Hughes trailed with 71,911 (212 percent). Four other Republicans held 35 percent of the vote.
Another Democrat, 14.8 percent, and an Independent, less than 1 percent. In the lower-turnout runoff contest on December 8, 2012, Hughes defeated Guidry, 52,939 votes (528 percent) to 47,259 (472 percent), to claim the ten-year term on the Supreme Court to succeed the retiring Catherine Doctorate. Kimball, the chief justice in her last years on the tribunal.
