From the President: Meet Incoming President Matthew J. McCoyd

August 30, 2011
DeKalb Bar President

by Matthew McCoyd

For those of you whom I have not yet had the privilege of meeting, please let me introduce myself:

I grew up about a mile from the DeKalb County courthouse, in a house where my parents still live. I attended elementary school at St. Thomas More and went to high school at Paideia. I went to college at Georgia Southern and Georgia State, where I met my bride Meredith; who also grew up in DeKalb County and is a Lakeside High School alumna. After graduating from Georgia State in 1990, I attended law school at Emory. I received my JD from Emory Law in 1993 and then practiced commercial litigation at a downtown Atlanta firm for about 10 years.

Shortly after the birth of our son Matthew Louis I left the big firm life and moved to a small insurance defense firm, where I finally got to try a bunch of jury trials. During this time, Meredith and I decided to move from Buckhead back to Decatur to raise our son. We bought a house about a mile from the courthouse and two miles from the house I grew up in.

When my friend, and Emory Law School classmate, Gwen Keyes-Fleming was elected district attorney for DeKalb County, I left private practice and joined the District Attorney’s Office. When I first joined the office, I was assigned as a trial line prosecutor in Judge Seeliger’s court room; after about a year, I moved to the White Collar Crimes Unit where I got to try RICO and other complex criminal cases with Jeanne Canavan.

While I loved trying cases with Jeanne, not that many of our cases actually went to trial, and so, after about four years in the White Collar Crimes Unit, I asked to go back to the trial line so I could try more cases. I am currently assigned to Judge Coursey’s courtroom and am once again trying a lot of cases.

In my spare time, I teach a few classes as an adjunct professor at Emory Law, help coach the Emory Mock Trial Team, and help coach the High School Mock Trial Team at Paideia.

I am blessed that I get to do what I love, trying cases, in the community that I grew up in and where Meredith and I chose to raise our son. Meredith, Matthew Louis, and I love living in Decatur and believe in the future of DeKalb County. I am honored to serve as president of the DeKalb Bar Association and hope that I can continue the great work that Jennifer Little started during her term as president.