Jennifer L. Brinkley is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Dayton School of Law, teaching in the areas of Family Law, Criminal Law, and Evidence.
After graduating from the University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law, she worked at a firm in Bowling Green, Kentucky and then as a solo practitioner, focusing on family law and criminal defense. She then served as an Assistant Warren County Attorney, prosecuting criminal cases, child support, guardianship cases, and juvenile offenses. During her practice, she was awarded the 2009 Guardian ad Litem of the Year Award, the 2014 University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law Alumni Young Professional Award, and the 2015 Outstanding Young Lawyer Award.
Professor Brinkley previously taught at the University of Colorado at Denver and Western Kentucky University before joining the faculty at the University of West Florida in Pensacola in 2019, where she was tenured and promoted as an Associate Professor in the Legal Studies Pre-Law program. At the University of West Florida, she taught Family Law, Criminal Law, Evidence, and other courses, as well as the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program where she took students into the Santa Rosa Correctional Institution each week to study criminal law topics with incarcerated men at the prison.
Professor Brinkley has been published in the Kentucky Law Journal, Quinnipiac Law Review, Northern Illinois University Law Review, FAWL Journal, Legal Writing: Journal of Legal Writing Institute, South Carolina Law Review, LMU Law Review, Kentucky Bench & Bar, The Legal Educator, The Young Lawyer, Gonzaga Law Review, and Florida A & M University Law Review. Her first book is forthcoming October 20, 2026, from the University of California Press titled "Justice Was Her Calling: The Fierce and Fascinating Life of Dorothy Kenyon."