Forty Under 40: Joshua D. McFadden

Despite a rocky start, Joshua McFadden’s career in Arkansas has been a success.

A California native, McFadden and his father visited John Brown University in Siloam Springs while researching potential colleges.

During the visit, they were in a serious auto accident. McFadden’s memory of the weekend is hazy, but he does recall how impressed he was by the JBU community’s outpouring of support during his two-day hospital stay.

The response partly influenced him to attend JBU, where he graduated magna cum laude in 2001, earned an MBA in 2004 and was a Soderquist Fellow at the Soderquist Center for Leadership and Ethics. He then decided to go to law school, bowing to one of his earliest memories of childhood: becoming an attorney.

“Standing up for someone else and arguing for them really appealed to me,” he said.

McFadden earned a law degree from the University of Arkansas in 2007, became a licensed attorney that same year and went to work for Davis Law Firm. In the decade since, he’s built a succesful practice that focuses on business and commercial litigation.

McFadden said being involved in the successful defense of a complex litigation case that lasted seven years is a crowning career achievement thus far. The case survived two appeals and had more than 1 million pages of discovery documents.

McFadden, who maintains the prestigious AV-Preeminent rating from Martindale Hubbell for ethics and legal ability, is beginning his sixth year as an elected delegate to the Arkansas Bar Association House of Delegates. He was also elected recently to a three-year term on the ABA Board of Governors.

Married with two sons, McFadden is an avid hiker and backpacker. He also teaches in the children’s ministry at New Heights Church in Fayetteville, and is a committee member for the Dream Big Gala charity event, a fundraiser for the Children’s Safety Center.