Tom Ainsworth was born and raised in the Philadelphia suburb of Bryn Mawr, along with his sister, with their father being a general surgeon and their mother a French cuisine cooking school instructor. He attended all 13 years at The Haverford School, a boy’s prep school, from Kindergarten through high school. He was the first from his prep school to attend Davidson College, graduating in 1975 with a B.S. degree in pre-med. After taking the equivalent of a first year medical school curriculum at Florida State University, he attended Wake Forest University School of Law, graduating in 1980 with a J.D. degree. Following law school, he worked briefly as an editor in a legal publishing company in Atlanta before moving to Charlotte in 1983 to practice law.

After working at a couple of Charlotte law firms doing a general practice, Tom wanted to use the medical background he had accumulated to concentrate on personal injury law, joining the law firm of Downer, Walters & Mitchener in 1988. There he was a litigator, trying mostly smaller automobile accident cases before a jury. After practicing eleven years at Downer Walters, Tom left to work for several other large personal injury law firms in Charlotte as a litigator before returning to Downer Walters from 2008 to 2019. Tom then formed his own law firm and went through certified mediation training in 2020, but decided to continue doing personal injury trial work. Tom associated with The Law Office of W. Daniel Grist’s as an “Of Counsel” litigator in 2021.

Having practiced for over forty years, Tom has tried over 400 jury trials to verdict in mostly smaller injury cases, but he is also a member of The Million Dollar Advocates Forum, along with the National Trial Lawyers Association Top 100 Civil Plaintiff Trial Lawyers in North Carolina, and the North Carolina Advocates for Justice. He is divorced, but has a daughter, Rachel, who lives in Brussels, Belgium, and has a PhD in History. Tom enjoys playing pub trivia, Revolutionary War re-enacting, word puzzles and travel. He has never lost his loyalty to Pennsylvania, being a rabid Philadelphia and Penn State (his father’s alma mater) sports team fan.