In January of 2021, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper appointed Alyson A. Grine to serve as a Superior Court Judge for Judicial District 15B. She is the only out lesbian ever to have served in this role in North Carolina and the only woman ever to have served in this role in her District. Prior to being appointed to the bench, Grine was a prosecutor in Durham, North Carolina in the Homicide Unit. She has also worked as an Assistant Professor at North Carolina Central University School of Law, and the Defender Educator at the UNC School of Government, where she specialized in criminal law and procedure and how issues of racial and ethnic bias may affect criminal proceedings. Grine received the Albert and Gladys Hall Coates Teaching Excellence Award from the School in 2012 and the Margaret Taylor Writing Award in 2015 for her work on Raising issues of Race in North Carolina Criminal Cases. Before joining UNC, Grine worked for five years as an Assistant Public Defender in Orange and Chatham counties. She served as a judicial clerk for Chief Justice Henry Frye of the NC Supreme Court in 2000 and for Judge Patricia Timmons-Goodson of the NC Court of Appeals in 1999. Grine earned a BA with distinction and a JD with honors from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MA in Spanish from the University of Virginia. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her wife and two children.