Judge Dietz grew up in a small Pennsylvania Dutch family with roots in the mountains of north central Pennsylvania. He is a Lutheran. He comes from a family of railroad and telephone workers and was the first in his family to attend college.
Before joining the Court, Judge Dietz was a partner on the Appellate & Supreme Court team at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, a 650-lawyer international law firm with its roots in North Carolina.
In his legal practice, Judge Dietz argued in the U.S. Supreme Court in Abramski v. United States, 134 S.Ct. 2259 (2014), and handled dozens of appeals in other state and federal courts around the country. He argued cases in a wide range of legal areas, including constitutional law, complex business law, criminal law, family law, and tort law. He has also represented a broad array of clients, from Fortune 500 companies to low-income families and indigent criminal defendants.
Judge Dietz is a North Carolina board certified specialist in Appellate Practice. He previously served as a vice president of the North Carolina Bar Association, as vice chair of the Appellate Practice Section and on the Appellate Practice Section Council. He has also served for more than ten years on the Bar Association’s Appellate Rules Committee, a group of lawyers and judges who review the state’s appellate rules and draft proposed changes.
Judge Dietz has served on a number of court-related boards and commissions, including the North Carolina Courts Commission, a group of judges, lawyers, legislators, and private citizens who study and recommend changes to the court system. He currently serves on the North Carolina Equal Access to Justice Commission and chaired the Commission’s strategic planning committee.
Judge Dietz graduated first in his class from Wake Forest University School of Law and served as research editor of the Wake Forest Law Review. He earned a master’s degree in judicial studies from Duke University School of Law, where he authored a master’s thesis on the economic liberty protections in the North Carolina Constitution. He holds his bachelor’s degree in business from Shippensburg University, graduating summa cum laude and serving as president of the University Honors Program. Judge Dietz attended both Wake Forest Law School and Shippensburg University on full academic scholarships.
After law school, Judge Dietz clerked for two highly regarded federal judges, Judge Emory Widener on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Judge Samuel Wilson on the U.S. District Court in Virginia.
Judge Dietz also served as a research fellow in comparative law at Kyushu University in Japan, where he studied comparative and international law issues including the Hague Convention on International Service of Process and the global implications of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
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