Lacy Thornburg

Lacy Herman Thornburg (born December 20, 1929) is an American lawyer and former judge; he served as the North Carolina attorney general from 1985 to 1993.
After serving in the United States Army, Thornburg attended Mars Hill College when it was a junior college. He then earned a law degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He practiced law in Webster, North Carolina from 1954 to 1967, and was meanwhile elected to three terms (1961–66) in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He was then appointed and later elected as a state superior court judge, serving from 1967 until 1983.
In 1992, he unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for governor of North Carolina. He was defeated in the primary by former governor Jim Hunt, who went on to win the general election.
In 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed Thornburg a United States District Court judge for the state's western district, based in Asheville, North Carolina. He retired on August 31, 2009.
He is the father of Alan Z. Thornburg and Lacy E. Thornburg, a Harvard-educated orthopaedic surgeon practicing in the Asheville area.
A stretch of U.S. Highway 23 in North Carolina is named for Thornburg.