Jones retired as chief judge of the U.S. Middle District Court of Pennsylvania. He was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush and unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on July 30, 2002. Jones has presided over a number of high-profile cases. In 2003, Jones struck down portions of Shippensburg University’s speech code on the basis that it violated the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. In that same year, Jones ruled in a decision later affirmed by the United States Supreme Court, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s statute assessing milk producers in order to fund advertising, including the Milk Mustache/got milk® campaign, did not infringe the free speech rights of the producers. In 2005, Jones presided over the landmark case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, after which he held that it was unconstitutional to teach intelligent design within a public school science curriculum. In 2006, he ruled that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s ballot access procedures for minor political parties did not violate the Constitution. In 2014, Jones resolved the matter of Whitewood v. Wolf by striking down as unconstitutional Pennsylvania’s ban on same-sex marriage. Before becoming a federal judge, Jones was a lawyer in private practice in his hometown of Pottsville, Pa.