James C. Green

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James C. (Jimmy) Green (1922-2000) was a North Carolina politician who served as Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives (1975-1976) and as Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina (1977-1985).

Green served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 1961 through 1976. He was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1976 after defeating Howard Nathaniel Lee in a Democratic primary runoff. In 1980, after a change to the North Carolina Constitution, Green became the first Lt. Governor elected to a second term. He defeated fellow former House Speaker Carl J. Stewart, Jr. in the 1980 Democratic primary, and then Republican Bill Cobey in the general election.

Green was charged in 1983 with accepting a bribe from an undercover FBI agent, but he was acquitted. The next year, he ran for Governor of North Carolina but finished fifth in the Democratic primary.

Green was convicted of income tax fraud in 1997, fined and sentenced to home confinement. [1] He died at a hospital in Elizabethtown, North Carolina in 2000.