William Holcombe Pryor Jr. (born April 26, 1962) is an American lawyer serving as the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He is a former commissioner of the United States Sentencing Commission. Previously, he was the attorney general of Alabama, from 1997 to 2004. Background Pryor was born in 1962 in Mobile, Alabama, the son of William Holcombe Pryor and Laura Louise Bowles. Pryor was raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic family. He and his siblings attended McGill–Toolen Catholic High School in Mobile. Pryor attended Northeast Louisiana University, now University of Louisiana at Monroe on a band scholarship, and graduated in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude. He then attended Tulane University Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Tulane Law Review. He graduated in 1987 with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude. Legal career After law school, Pryor served as a law clerk to judge John Minor Wisdom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1987 to 1988. He then entered private practice with the Birmingham, Alabama, law firm Cabaniss, Johnston, Gardner, Dumas & O'Neal. He also served as an adjunct professor of maritime law at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University from 1989 to 1995. Pryor is currently a visiting professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and an adjunct professor at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University. Political career In 1994, Pryor was introduced to Jeff Sessions, who was then campaigning to become the attorney general of Alabama. Sessions won, and from 1995 to 1997 Pryor served as Alabama's deputy attorney general. When Sessions became a U.S. Senator in 1997, Alabama Governor Fob James made Pryor the state's Attorney General. He was, at that time, the youngest state attorney general in the United States. Pryor was elected in 1998 and reelected in 2002. At reelection, Pryor received nearly 59% of the vote, the highest percentage of any statewide candidate. Pryor received national attention in 2003 when he called for the removal of Alabama chief justice Roy Moore, who had disobeyed a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama judicial building. Pryor said that although he agreed with the propriety of displaying the Ten Commandments in a courthouse, he was bound to follow the court order and uphold the rule of law.