Judge Jones served with the United States Army Air Corps near the end of World War II. He used is GI Bill to enter Youngstown College. He studied law at night while serving as Director, Fair Employment Practices Commission in Youngstown. With his Bachelor of Laws degree, he entered private practice. In 1962, after Attorney General Robert Kennedy appointed him, Judge Jones because the first African-American Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. Five years later, he was appointed as Assistant General Counsel to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission). Judge Jones then served as the General Counsel to the NAACP, where he directed all NAACP litigation for nine years, arguing some of the most important civil rights cases in the United States. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed Judge Jones to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He served as a Judge until 1995, then as a Senior Judge until his retirement in 2002. During his tenure on the Sixth Circuit, he also taught at Harvard Law School and the University of Cincinnati College of Law. He was one of the observers of the first democratic elections in South Africa and participated in the drafting of the South African constitution. After retirement, he continued to practice law as senior counsel at Blank Rome LLP until 2018 and wrote his memoir, Answering the Call: An Autobiography of the Modern Struggle to End Racial Discrimination in America. The Federal Courthouse in Youngstown, Ohio is named in his honor.