Brooks Pierce is pleased to announce that Ellie Nanney and Brian Roper-Nelson have been selected as the 2026 recipients of the firm’s Chief Justice Henry E. Frye Diversity Summer Fellowship.
The Frye Fellowship includes a salaried Summer Associate position in Brooks Pierce’s 2026 and 2027 Summer Programs. Each Frye Fellow will also be awarded: a $10,000 scholarship following successful completion of the firm’s 2026 Summer Program; a $5,000 scholarship following successful completion of the firm’s 2027 Summer Program; and a $25,000 stipend upon joining the firm as a first-year associate.
Nanney is a first-year student at the University of North Carolina School of Law. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is a 1L representative of the Carolina Health Law Organization. Nanney is also on the Membership Committee for Women in Law and a member of the Transactional and Corporate Law Association.
Roper-Nelson is a first-year student at Harvard Law School. He received his bachelor’s degree from North Carolina A&T State University. He received the Dean’s Scholar Prize in Civil Procedure, and he is also a member of the Harvard Black Law Students Association and Harvard Law School Antitrust Association.
Frye, who retired from Brooks Pierce in 2016, broke many racial barriers during his long and storied career. In 1963, he joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of North Carolina as one of the first Black federal prosecutors in the South. Justice Frye won election to the North Carolina General Assembly in 1968—the first Black person to do so since 1899. After serving in the NC House and the Senate, he was appointed to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1983. Justice Frye was the first Black jurist to sit on the state’s highest bench. In 1999, he became the court’s first Black chief justice. After seventeen years on the bench, Justice Frye joined Brooks Pierce in 2001. Now retired from private practice, he remains actively involved in vital community efforts. He continues to advise and inspire each of us at Brooks Pierce. We hope that the Frye Diversity Fellowship will inspire a new generation of law students to pursue excellence and dare to be first.
For more information on the fellowship, click here.