Attorney Julian D. Miller is the current Director of the Reuben V. Anderson Pre-Law Program and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Touglaoo College. He is also a practicing attorney, serving as a senior associate at Forman Watkins & Krutz LLP in Jackson, Mississippi, where he focuses his practice on a variety of civil litigation matters, including commercial litigation, general and products liability matters, governmental litigation and appeals in state and federal court.
He was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta region in Winstonville, MS. He was educated in the MS Delta public school system, graduating from the MS School for Mathematics & Science. He matriculated at Harvard University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in government in 2007. After college, he returned home to the MS Delta to do anti-poverty and community development work there. As the program coordinator for the MS Delta Initiative of the Dreyfus Health Foundation, he organized an anti-poverty initiative called New Delta Rising, bringing together a group of 200 community organizers across 11 core MS Delta counties to develop county-based, grassroots, economic development projects that emphasize other areas of social good (public health, education, etc.). He is a co-founder and board vice-chairman of the Delta Fresh Foods Initiative, where he is working to developing community food systems throughout the MS Delta as both as a means of economic development as a means of preventative health. He successfully procured over $1 million in grants to fund two Good Food Revolution projects in Bolivar County and Quitman County in the Mississippi Delta to develop local community food systems in those counties led by youth. He joined the MS Food Policy Council to lay the foundation for the development of a sustainable, equitable statewide food system based on worker-owned cooperative farms.
He is currently working to establish the Reuben V. Anderson Center for Justice to implement programs in poverty reduction, educational advancement, public health equity, community and economic development, and children’s legal rights in Mississippi. Through a partnership with the Anderson Center, he is also working to establish the Reuben V. Anderson Institute for Social Justice to implement grassroots anti-poverty and policy projects in the areas of economic justice, public health equity, educational equity, and criminal justice equity that will have a transformational impact on public policy in Mississippi. He chronicled some of his anti-poverty work in the Mississippi Delta in a chapter in a book entitled, Problem Solving for Better Health: A Global Perspective. He also has other publications to his credit related to public policy and economic justice.
He graduated from the University of MS School of Law in December 2012 with honors. He is served as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Presiding Judge T. Kenneth Griffis, Jr. of the Mississippi Court of Appeals. He was formerly an associate attorney at Butler Snow LLP in Ridgeland, MS & Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP in Jackson, MS. He is licensed to practice in all state and federal courts in Mississippi. He is also currently the founding director and adjunct professor of the Education Law & Policy Clinic at Mississippi College School of Law. He has been named Top 40 Under 40 by National Black Lawyers (2017, 2020), Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch (2021), and is a recipient of the Common Future Bridge Fellowship for his work on community food systems.