John Charles Thomas (born 1950) is an American attorney and a former Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia. Thomas graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. degree in American government in 1972. He next attended the University of Virginia School of Law and received his J.D. degree in 1975. Following law school, Thomas joined Hunton & Williams, then styled Hunton, Williams, Gay & Gibson. He was the first African-American at the firm. "I did not know what to expect. We were not many years from the searing violence that scarred the nation during the days of the Civil Rights Movement; the Selma March, King's assassination, riots in the streets of major cities all were within recent memory. And so it was a major step to be the first Black lawyer at Hunton & Williams; I saw it as