Chris Gardner, Attorney Member

D. Chris Gardner is the founding member of Gardner Milner, PLLC of Jonesboro, Arkansas, a business and commercial law firm. He also provides ongoing corporate and general counsel services to a number of companies and organizations.  He formerly served as Chairman of the Board of E.C. Barton & Company, a large Arkansas-based multi-state retailer of building materials. Gardner’s practice focuses primarily upon complex commercial transactions and litigation, business law, finance and banking law, commercial real estate, and corporate law. Gardner was formerly a principal of the law firm of Womack, Landis, Phelps, McNeill & McDaniel in Jonesboro, and prior to that was corporate counsel to Entergy Power Group, a venture capital firm which developed, owned and operated foreign and domestic electric power projects. Entergy Power Group has since morphed into several subsidiaries of Entergy Corporation, parent company of Entergy Arkansas and one of the largest electric utility companies in the U.S.

Gardner is originally from Paragould and graduated from Greene County Tech High School. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, from Arkansas State University and his law degree with honors from the William H. Bowen School of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He is married to Dr. Shelly R. Gardner, and they have two children, Evan and Olivia. Dr. Gardner received her Doctor of Pharmacy from UAMS School of Pharmacy in Little Rock and has been in the active practice of pharmacy since 1995.

In 2015, Gardner was appointed by Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson to the Arkansas Pollution Control & Ecology Commission. The Governor also appointed him to serve three (3) times as a Special Associate Justice to the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2015 and 2021. In 2017, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge appointed Gardner to serve his first term on the Arkansas Judicial Discipline & Disability Commission. Gardner is a member of the Craighead County, Arkansas and American Bar Associations. Gardner has served as Program Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, Vice President and President of the Craighead County Bar Association. In connection with his membership in the Arkansas Bar Association, he has been appointed to the Business Law, Probate & Trust Law, and Real Estate Law. Gardner is also a member of Delta Theta Phi, a legal fraternity, and The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, an affiliation of legal theorists and public policy analysts.