Meet
Christy
Malott

Christy is a Durham native, graduate of Riverside High School (’97), Duke University (’01) and North Carolina Central School of Law (’05). She has twenty years of legal experience in civil law, including family, child abuse and neglect, juvenile delinquency, and general civil law. She has committed her personal and professional life to serving her hometown and is uniquely qualified to serve on Durham’s District Court Bench.

Christy grew up the oldest of four children on a dead-end street behind present day Costco. She rode the bus with friends to Hillandale, Bragtown, and Chewning, and spent the most impressionable years of her life playing outside and absorbing Durham cultures. After graduating from Riverside High School (’97), Christy majored in Political Science at Duke University (’01) where she worked in the football office, played softball, ran a marathon, and discovered the world beyond North Carolina.

As a young adult, Christy spent one year working at Hope Valley Elementary School. During that year, she tutored a group of Spanish-speaking third graders and learned about the culture and the daily struggles of undocumented immigrants. She also became a Guardian ad Litem (“GAL”) Volunteer and experienced Durham through the eyes of a family living in Few Gardens. Those experiences led her to North Carolina Central University School of Law and its focus on trial practice.

As a new law student, Christy was drawn to the GAL Program’s legal advocacy for abused and neglected children. Under an IOLTA grant, she completed a summer internship and academic externship with Wendy Sotolongo in the GAL Program. During those years, Christy was able to learn from top notch county attorneys, public defenders, and judges. Upon graduation from law school in 2005, Christy accepted a position at a small private practice where she handled a wide variety of cases, including delinquency, abuse/neglect, traffic, and general civil cases.

Christy married her high school sweetheart, Donnie Malott (SHS ’96), in 2006. Donnie, an air traffic controller, had recently returned from a joint military mission in Iraq. Together they moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where Donnie worked for Department of Defense, and Christy assisted Court Appointed Special Advocates (“CASA”) of Laramie County in its development and legal advocacy. After six months out west and one Wyoming blizzard, Christy was happy to return to Durham as a GAL Attorney Advocate and Donnie as an air traffic controller at RDU Airport.

In 2008, Christy and Donnie welcomed a child, then five years old, into their home unexpectedly – they were her fifth placement, including foster care, in the first five years of her life. After many mistakes, laughs, and adventures, Christy and Donnie adopted that precious girl in 2011. Raising her gave Christy a deeper understanding of trauma, broken systems, addiction, and the challenges facing those who strive to heal and overcome. The lessons Christy learned are numerous and nuanced. Christy’s daughter knows she is a deeply loved Malott and is equally loved by her birth family.

After the Malotts added two biological children to their young family, Christy took a position at Lewis & Anderson, a well-established family law practice. She handled custody, divorce, equitable distribution, spousal support, adoptions, and other tangential issues for clients in Durham, Orange, and Wake counties. During her time there, Christy realized how many people needed family law services but could not afford to pay for them. So in 2014, Christy worked with JusticeMatters to secure funding for free family law services for both citizens and immigrants in the community who qualified financially. She left Lewis & Anderson to launch these services in Durham.

At JusticeMatters, Christy developed and expanded the Family Law section. During her time as Senior Staff and Family Law Section Lead, JusticeMatters grew from three to fourteen staff members, served thousands of individuals, using a trauma-informed, holistic approach to family and immigration legal services. In 2017, with Christy’s oversight and a grant from the North Carolina State Bar Foundation, JusticeMatters began offering a free weekly family law clinic (the Pro Se Center) at the Durham Courthouse and continued to offer services over the phone through the pandemic until returning in person in 2023. Christy developed and provided numerous legal trainings and assisted with community education and legislative advocacy on legal issues related to children and families, trauma, and human trafficking. She served as an early consultant for the development of North Carolina’s first district court aimed at rehabilitating victims of human trafficking: the WORTH Court in Cumberland County.

In 2015, Christy was appointed by the Board of County Commissioners to Durham’s Community Child Protection Team (“CCPT”) and Child Fatality Prevention Team (“CFPT”) – only to learn that the teams were not functioning as required by statute. Christy helped the teams reconvene and accepted a position as Chair. Since 2015, the teams, which include top leaders from child welfare, law enforcement, public health, public schools, and other relevant agencies, have reviewed cases of child abuse, neglect, and fatalities in Durham County and recommended systemic changes to better support children and families in Durham.

Christy rejoined the GAL Program in 2022, bringing knowledge of trauma-informed legal work, best practices with interpreters, immigrant concerns, and community resources to the Durham Courthouse. Since 2024, Christy has served Durham County in the County Attorney’s Office where she offers civil legal support to the County’s various departments.  She has thoroughly enjoyed learning new law and working with the employees who make the County’s services possible.

Christy spends her free time running, reading, and cheering for her children on fields and courts all over Durham and surrounding counties.