H                                 

                             Hon. Charles M. “Chuck” Walker

                                            U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Middle District of Tennessee

Judge Walker grew up in Brevard County, Florida, in the shadow of Kennedy Space Center.  He attributes his success in life to the core values of family and service that were instilled in him during his childhood. Growing up on Florida’s Space Coast, he dreamed of a career in aviation and graduated from Astronaut High School in 1986 and attended Auburn University because of its respected aerospace programs.

Surprisingly, Judge Walker’s most important contribution at Auburn would come in the courtroom not the cockpit. He was one of the early witnesses for the plaintiffs in the landmark case Knight v. Alabama, which remedied the vestiges of racial segregation in the funding of higher education in Alabama. His experience with the Knight case caused a shift in his long-term career plans from aviation to law.  He graduated from Auburn in 1990 with a degree in Aviation Management, was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force and had orders to attend flight school.  However, the abrupt end of the Cold War and subsequent military drawdown halted his plans to be an Air Force pilot. As life would have it, this disappointment accelerated his goal of attending law school.  While still on active duty, he enrolled in the evening program at The University of Illinois Chicago School of Law and graduated cum laude. In 1999, after separating from the Air Force, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee to begin his legal career as an attorney with the law firm Wyatt, Tarrant and Combs, LLP where his practice focused on secured transactions, creditor rights, and bankruptcy. 

After being profoundly affected by the terrorist attacks on 9/11, he left private practice in 2002 to return to public service as a trial attorney in the United States Department of Justice, Office of the United States Trustee.  He also returned to military service as a Judge Advocate General (JAG) in the Air Force Reserves.  He served as a trial attorney for 14 years until being appointed a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the Middle District of Tennessee in July 2016.  In addition to the high honor of serving as a federal judge, he continues his military service as a major general in the Air National Guard, assigned to the National Guard Bureau Joint Staff in Washington D.C.  As a federal bankruptcy judge and two-star general, Judge Walker has a unique perspective on America.

Judge Walker is a faculty member for the Federal Judicial Center and a frequent speaker throughout the country on both consumer and business bankruptcy topics.  He is active in the Nashville community as a member of the Nashville Bar Association, a director for the Tennessee Chapter of Turnaround Management Association and a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute’s Veterans Task Force.  He is a graduate of the Young Leaders Council Program, cofounder of the Credit Abuse Resistance Education (“CARE”) program in Tennessee and a former director of the Mid-South Commercial Law Institute, Family & Children’s Service and the Crisis Intervention Center.  He was a recipient of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, Honorable Cornelius Blackshear Fellowship in 2004 and 2005.  In 2015, he received the Major General Robert I. Gruber Excellence in Teaching Award, which is awarded by the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General School, recognizing the most exceptional reserve military law instructor.