John Gressette Felder, Jr.

The fight is personal.

Johnny Felder is a founding partner at McGowan Hood Felder & Phillips focusing his practice on medical malpractice, nursing home, assisted living and catastrophic personal injury cases. He has procured many successful trial verdicts, both jury and non-jury. As just one example, he gave the closing argument in what was the largest personal injury verdict in the history of Aiken County. While predominantly handling personal injury matters, Johnny has handled various types of business and class action cases. For example, he represented a group of automobile dealers in litigation involving RICO and breach of contract claims against multiple Honda entities. He also served as class counsel in antitrust litigation against Hillenbrand Industries, resulting in one of the largest private antitrust settlements in the history of the United States. Johnny also was an attorney who worked for the state of South Carolina in the landmark tobacco litigation. He also served on the steering committee in the Graniteville train disaster litigation and was a member of the Economic Loss Steering Committee in the Renu recall litigation.

Johnny is licensed in South Carolina state court, the South Carolina Court of Appeals, the South Carolina Supreme Court, the United States federal district court of the State of South Carolina, the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. Johnny is an active member of the South Carolina Association for Justice (SCAJ), having served several years on the organization’s Board of Governors as well as being an active member of the American Association of Justice (AAJ) and the Southern Trial Lawyers Association (STLA). Johnny is also an active member of the prestigious American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA).

Johnny has presented on Opening Arguments for the ABOTA masters in trial and also presented on nursing home litigation at the annual South Carolina SCAJ convention.

Beyond the courtroom.

In addition to his work through the legal profession, Johnny has a love for sports, particularly basketball and coaching. His high school retired his basketball jersey at the completion of his high school playing career. Johnny then played basketball briefly at Wofford College. At Wofford, Johnny was an economics major, had the highest grade point average on the basketball team his freshman year and was ultimately inducted into Phi Beta Kappa for academic excellence receiving his BA degree in 1990. After graduation from Wofford, and before attending law school, Johnny coached the boys basketball team at his former high school to the only boys state championship in the school’s history.

Johnny received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of South Carolina School of law in 1994. While in law school, Johnny was a member of the SC Law Review and the Order of the Wig and Robe and received the American Jurisprudence award in Civil Procedure as well as the highest award in his legal writing class.

Johnny is a past president and former board member of the Palmetto Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and for several years served as a board member of the Hootie and the Blowfish Monday After the Masters charity golf event. Over the years he as actively supported diabetes research by participating in walks and galas. He has also participated in four 100 mile rides in different locations across the country to raise money for diabetes research to raise awareness about this disease. Johnny also traveled to Washington DC with his daughter (Anna, who is a type 1 diabetic) when she was 16 to participate in Children’s Congress in order to advocate for diabetes research funding.

Johnny is happily married to his wife Kim and is the proud father of Gressette, William and Anna Felder and proud stepfather of Claudia and Harriet Dubose and Xan Ensley.