Adele Grubbs earned her law degree at Manchester University in England, then moved to Georgia in 1969. She started a private practice before going to work as a prosecutor and later a juvenile court judge. She was first elected to the superior court in 2000. She served as chief judge for a two-year term that ended in 2014.

When she spoke to one of our reporters in the early days of the Great Recession, she showed how much she cared about litigants, saying, “So many people are in such desperate straits.”