Peter S. Gilchrist, III, has been the elected District Attorney for the 26th Prosecutorial District of North Carolina since 1975.  The 26th District includes all of Mecklenburg County as well as the municipalities of Charlotte, Mint Hill, Matthews, Pineville, Cornelius, Huntersville and Davidson.

He is married to Anne Byrd Gilchrist.

He was born in Charlotte on July 12, 1939, and attended public schools in Charlotte, graduating from Woodberry Forest School in Orange, Virginia in 1958.  He received a degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1962 and his law degree from Duke University School of Law in 1965.  He also studied accounting at Duke, the University of North Carolina, and Queens College and became a Certified Public Accountant.

Mr. Gilchrist worked for a national accounting firm from September 1965 until September 1968 when he left for stints as the Solicitor in the Mecklenburg County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, a Financial Officer for a private company and as Legislative Liaison for the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce during the 1969 session of the General Assembly.  He returned to prosecution as an Assistant Solicitor until he was elected District attorney, taking office in 1975.

He has won election as the District Attorney without opposition every four years after the first time he ran.  The District Attorney’s Office has grown from 14 attorneys and 2 support staff members to the current staff of over 80 attorneys and 60 support staff.

Along with all the other responsibilities of his office, Mr. Gilchrist continues to work to achieve two major goals for this office and the state:

• Adequate funding for the Judicial Branch.

Staffing, salaries, supplies and equipment are inadequate for the needs of a modern court system and he has worked to improve this situation not just in Mecklenburg but across the state.  He chairs a subcommittee of the State Judicial Council that studies salaries and benefits of the Judicial Branch and makes recommendations to the Chief Justice.

• An up-to-date information system for the criminal justice system.

He continues to work with the Administrative Office of the Courts and Mecklenburg County to develop and build an automated criminal justice system that would use up-to-date technology and provide case processing information and management information that would allow agencies to deal with cases and people and to monitor performance and evaluate their processes.

Mr. Gilchrist is and has been active in a number of professional and community activities.

• He is a member of the State Judicial Council
• He is a member of the North Carolina Courts Commission
• He is a member of the Board of Regents of the National College of District Attorneys
• He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Mecklenburg Council of the Boy Scouts of America
• He is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Resource Center for Criminal Justice Policymakers
• He has been engaged to provide technical assistance to prosecutors' offices in 17 jurisdictions and 10 states
• He serves on the Board of The Greater Enrichment Program in Charlotte, NC