Don Cochran

Biography

Don Cochran teaches Evidence, Trial Advocacy and Criminal Law courses. Prior to joining Belmont’s faculty, he served as the Presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee from September 2017 to February 2021.  Prior to becoming U.S. Attorney, he was a law professor at Belmont University College of Law and the Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama where he taught courses in criminal procedure, evidence, criminal law, and trial advocacy.  From 1998 to 2002 Professor Cochran was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Alabama.  During that time, Professor Cochran prosecuted criminal cases involving white collar crimes, public corruption, and violent crimes, including successful prosecution of the final defendant charged with the historic 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four girls.  Professor Cochran began his prosecutorial career in the District Attorney’s Office in Birmingham where he prosecuted homicides, sexual assaults, and other violent crimes.  Professor Cochran clerked for Judge Julie E. Carnes of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia and is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt Law School. 

Professor Cochran teaches Evidence Law, Trial Advocacy, and Criminal Law at Belmont Law.