Jade Craig is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law. Craig teaches courses on political and civil rights, real estate law, and constitutional law. His research interests focus on fair housing, state and local government law, and the role of public finance and financial regulation in America’s racial wealth gap. He currently serves on the Executive Board for the Association for Law, Property, and Society (ALPS) and co-chairs the American Bar Association Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development’s annual conference.
Craig graduated with a B.A. from the University of Virginia, where he majored in French and Political and Social Thought and was a member of the liberal arts honors program. He completed an undergraduate thesis on black women’s transition to the North during the Second Wave of the Great Migration. After college, Professor Craig joined Teach For America (TFA). He taught kindergarten in his home state of Mississippi for three years before going to law school. He served as a national spokesperson for TFA and the Mississippi Delta region awarded him the inaugural Roger Malkin fellowship for excellence and service.
Craig earned his law degree at Columbia Law School. As a law student, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Journal of Race and Law and as co-chair of the Civil Rights Law Society. He also interned at the Fair Housing Justice Center and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. After law school, Professor Craig served as a law clerk for Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Detroit and for Judge Carlton Reeves in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi in Jackson. In 2014, the Obama Administration appointed Craig to serve as Special Policy Advisor to the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In that role, he managed relationships with civil rights groups and affordable housing stakeholders and coordinated the agency’s efforts on addressing housing in the context of international human rights.
Craig spent his career in private practice in Tampa, Florida, focusing on commercial litigation, real estate and construction litigation, and labor and employment law. He is also the owner and founder of Jade A. Craig, P.A., where his practice has included financial services regulatory matters and consulting. Craig is admitted to practice law in Florida, Mississippi and New York as well as in all of the federal district courts in Florida, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Eleventh, and Federal Circuits.
