By Miles Layton

PLYMOUTH — News spread fast throughout Plymouth and Washington County when a Creswell native was appointed District Court Judge, so I stopped by D. Cole Phelps’ law office to chat and grab an interview.

News flash — Phelps will be sworn in at 3 p.m. Friday, July 31, at the Washington County Courthouse. There will be a reception to follow at Riverview Cafe at 108 East Water Street, Plymouth.

The photo that accompanies this story comes from when Cole was sworn in as a county commissioner a few years back. A gallery of photos featuring Cole appears at the end of this story. When I take a photo of Cole’s swearing-in ceremony as District Court Judge for the Second Judicial District, maybe I’ll post that photo and the one from this story together. Anyway, check out the photo gallery at the end of this article.

Back to our story — since I have been in many lawyers’ offices over the years, I know local attorneys like Cole put in 60-80 hours a week, so his working on a Friday, the July 3rd holiday when the courts were closed, was no surprise. To set the stage, Cole’s office was clean, with files stacked around his desk and on nearby tables. He was wearing a shirt that embraced his alma mater, East Carolina University — both of us proud Pirates alumni.

Cole, congratulations!

You’ll be the first District Court Judge from Washington County since the 60s.

I asked Cole what it means to be appointed a District Court judge — he didn’t start with himself. He started with the people who would stand before his bench.

“District Court is where real life happens,” Phelps said. “The decisions made there don’t stay inside the courtroom. They affect children, families, victims, jobs, and futures.”

It’s a philosophy Phelps has been building for nearly 13 years, one case at a time, long before Governor Josh Stein appointed him to serve as a District Court judge for Judicial District 2 — covering Beaufort, Hyde, Martin, Tyrrell and Washington counties. And it’s a philosophy rooted less in legal theory than in a life spent, quite literally, among the people he’ll now be asked to judge.

This story was originally published in the Roanoke Beacon, Washington County and Eastern North Carolina’s trusted news source.

Justice, Not One Size Fits All

Phelps isn’t interested in staking out ideological ground on the bench. He doesn’t talk about textualism or judicial activism. His answer to how he’ll approach the job is simpler, and more personal.

“The first thing is that I’m going to follow the law, right, regardless of my personal feelings,” he said. “The legislature mandates what we have to do… if the law is a law then I have to follow it, that’s my job. And that’s what the Governor has entrusted me to do.”

But following the law, in his view, doesn’t mean losing sight of the people affected by it. “Behind every file number is a real person,” Phelps said. He’s watched too many people walk out of a courtroom having just been sentenced with no real understanding of what happened to them or why, brushed off with a line like “ask your lawyer, your lawyer will explain it.” Phelps wants his courtroom to work differently.

“One of my goals is to make sure that people understand when they come into courtroom and a judgment has been entered — or whatever’s happening — that they understand the process,” he said. “Because I think if we can get folks to understand what’s happening on the front end, then you don’t have as many issues throughout on the back end.”

In his own written reflections on the appointment, Phelps put it plainly: justice isn’t one-size-fits-all. “Sometimes it means accountability,” he wrote. “Sometimes it means recognizing when someone has earned a second chance. Every single time, it means listening carefully, applying the law faithfully, and treating every person with dignity and respect.”

That balance — between accountability and mercy — is something Phelps says 13 years of law practice taught him case by case. “There are a lot of times as a lawyer where I’ve felt like someone deserved a second chance,” he said, “and there are a lot of times I have felt like someone needed to be held accountable.” Getting that balance right, he says, is what he hopes to bring to the bench.

He wants people to walk away from his courtroom believing three things, he wrote: “that I was prepared, that I listened, and that I treated everyone with fairness, dignity, and respect. They may not always agree with every decision I make, but I hope they always leave believing they were heard.”

Subscribe — it’s free!

Serving, Not Climbing

For all the milestones on his resume, Phelps insists the judgeship was never really the goal.

“I don’t think becoming a judge was ever the dream,” he wrote. “Serving was.”

That thread runs through everything he’s done — elected as a Washington County commissioner at 23, the youngest person ever to hold the seat; opening his own law practice in Plymouth; teaching family law and public policy at his alma mater, East Carolina University; awarding scholarships through his nonprofit foundation; and representing clients across five counties for over a decade. “It’s always come back to trying to make a positive difference in the lives of others and in the communities I call home,” he said.

Over those 13 years, Phelps built a practice that touched nearly every corner of district court life: criminal cases, juvenile matters, family law, domestic violence, child support, and abuse, neglect and dependency cases. “I’ve stood beside victims waiting to be heard,” he wrote. “I’ve represented children whose futures were hanging in the balance, parents fighting for their families, people who were wrongly accused, people who made mistakes but were determined to turn their lives around, and people who needed to be held accountable for their actions.”

One case has stayed with him above the rest: a mother whose children had been removed by social services, who then did something all too rare — she completed every requirement of her reunification plan. “She worked the whole plan, and I’ll never forget the day she got her kids back,” Phelps said. “That was a huge day, and that was here in this county.”

That kind of proximity — to victories and to heartbreak — is, Phelps believes, exactly what prepares him for the bench. “After nearly thirteen years in District Court, I believe I’m prepared to serve on day one,” he wrote. “The people of this district deserve a judge who is ready from the moment they take the oath.”

A Small Town That Shaped Him

To understand why Phelps, 37, sees the law the way he does, it helps to understand where he came from. He was born and raised in Washington County, the son and grandson of working people. His father’s parents built a life around steady labor — his grandmother doing sewing alterations and commuting daily to the beach for work well into her seventies, his grandfather a retired correctional officer who, after 30 years with the state prison system, started Phelps Tree Service with Cole’s father. His mother’s parents worked just as hard: her mother at Womble’s drugstore until it closed, her father a farmer.

That ethic of showing up and doing the work followed Phelps everywhere — through three sports at Creswell High, a term as senior class president, and eventually into a law career built one case, one client, one county at a time.

But Phelps doesn’t credit hard work alone. He points to teachers and coaches who saw something in a kid from a rural county and pushed him toward it — his high school English teacher, Lynn Craddock, now a member of the local Board of Education, and his coach, Wayne Rodgers, Sr., who is now a member of the Washington County Board of Education. “Had it not been for people in this community like Miss Craddock at Creswell High School — had it not been for people like her investing in me, pushing me, believing in me — I don’t know where I would be,” he said.

Phelps didn’t set out to become a lawyer, either. He arrived at East Carolina University with his sights set on medicine. “Wanted to be a pediatrician. That was my dream,” he said. Biology and chemistry had other plans. “Took biology and got a D and I realized that people probably didn’t want a D pediatrician.” A switch to psychology produced the same result. It was almost by accident that Phelps wandered into a law course taught by Dr. Elizabeth Carroll — a class that changed everything. “She’s the one that encouraged me to apply to law school, ’cause I had never thought about it at all,” he said.

At ECU, Phelps found his footing in the university’s student judicial branch, prosecuting campus conduct cases as student body attorney general. By the time he arrived at North Carolina Central University School of Law in Durham, he’d found his calling, and Central’s mission resonated immediately. “The mission statement for Central’s law school is about giving back and going back into your communities and just public service,” he said. “And that mission statement sat with me.”

At Central, a criminal defense clinic in his third year gave him his first real taste of the courtroom under North Carolina’s “3L practice rule,” which let him represent real clients in Durham County under a supervising attorney’s guidance. He passed the bar on his first attempt — and came home.

“I just felt some sense of — they invested in me. So I feel like I needed to come back and invest in the community,” he said. Coming back wasn’t a stepping stone, he wrote. “It was always the goal.”

Practicing Law Among Friends and Neighbors

What sets Phelps’ practice apart isn’t just its breadth — it’s its intimacy. In a small county, the people who walk through his office door aren’t strangers. They’re neighbors. Sometimes they’re people he’s known since childhood.

“I think it makes it more personal, where, like in a in a larger town, you would just go to a lawyer and he would know him. But here, a lot of times, I know the person, I know their parents, I know their grandparents,” Phelps said. “And I think it helps you understand the fuller picture.”

Phelps points to his own family history — his parents separated the same summer he left for college — as something that shapes how he sees the families who come before the court, especially in custody and divorce matters. “I just think that gives me a good perspective,” he said. “I get it, right, because I was that kid. And so I can see how it can impact families.”

What This Means for Washington County

Phelps’ appointment carries real historical weight. By his own research with the clerk of court, no Washington County resident has served on the trial bench in roughly 60 years — since W. Ronald Gaylord presided over the county’s Recorder’s Court before it was replaced by the modern District Court system in 1967.

“If what I’ve been told is correct, it’s been nearly sixty years since someone from Washington County has served on the local trial bench,” Phelps wrote. “Sixty years.”

To Phelps, that number is less about him and more about everyone who came before him. “I didn’t get here because I was extraordinary,” he wrote. “I got here because I was surrounded by extraordinary people. My parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, mentors, friends, and neighbors invested in me long before I had accomplished anything. Every opportunity I’ve ever had started because somebody believed in me first.”

A Message for Every Kid in Washington County

That’s the message Phelps hopes echoes loudest through Creswell, Plymouth, Roper, Mackeys, and every corner of Washington County: where you start doesn’t determine where you end up.

“I hope this appointment reminds every young person growing up in Washington County that where you come from does not determine where you can go,” he wrote. “You don’t have to grow up in a big city or come from a wealthy family to accomplish something meaningful. If you’re willing to work hard, treat people the right way, and never stop believing in yourself, amazing things can happen.”

He hopes teachers talk about it in their classrooms, and parents share it with their kids. “I hope one young person sees someone who started where they are and realizes, ‘Maybe I can do that too,’” he wrote. “If this appointment gives even one child a little more confidence to believe in themselves, it’ll mean more to me than any title ever could.”

Phelps’ appointment fills only the remainder of a term, and this November, voters across the five-county district will decide who serves the next four years. He’s already thinking about how to earn that trust.

“My focus is simple: work hard, serve with integrity, and earn the public’s trust every day,” Phelps wrote. “I hope the voters see someone who has prepared for this responsibility for more than a decade, who understands the people who walk into our courtrooms every day, and who will treat every person with fairness, dignity, and respect.”

For a kid from a town with no stoplights, that’s never really been complicated. It’s just been the goal all along.