Judith Fournie Helms
Judy grew up in southern Illinois and attended a Catholic all-girl high school before moving to Chicago for college and law school. She put herself through school working at a 100-year-old hardware store in downtown Chicago. When she started practicing law in 1978, there were very few women in the courtrooms. She met her husband Larry when he showed up in one of those courtrooms as opposing counsel.
In the law firm where she worked, she was the first lawyer to deliver a baby, and a maternity policy was born. Ten years later, her second daughter arrived, and a maternity policy for adoptive moms was conceived.
Judy and Larry both retired after thirty-three years of practicing law in Chicago, and now live and write fiction at their home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Their two canine family members, Benny and Chica the Brave, insist they are mountain dogs…with all that entails.