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Judy Norrell

Judy Norrell was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on February 12, 1935, and grew up in Monticello, Drew County, Arkansas, and Washington, DC.

Norrell attended Ohio Wesleyan University and majored in philosophy. In 1957 she studied philosophy at the University of Madras on a Fulbright Fellowship. Upon her return from India, Norrell earned a law degree from George Washington Law School in Washington, DC.

After law school she started Julia J. Norrell & Assoc., a political consulting firm. Norrell has been a lobbyist for the insurance industry, the League of Women Voters, Business and Professional Women, the American Association of University Professors, and successfully lobbied for the passage of Title IX in the early 1970s.

Norrell began collecting art when she returned to the US from India. Artwork from her personal collection has been shown in various exhibits, including Myth, Memory and Imagination: Universal Themes in the Life and Culture of the South, curated by the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, and Shadows of History: Photographs of the Civil War at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Norrell has donated some of her collection to the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia, and The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.