Jay was born in Charleston, West Virginia on May 18, 1958. He lived with his family in Greensboro and Raleigh, North Carolina, as well as brief periods in New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. He has been married since 1985 and has two daughters.
Jay graduated cum laude from Duke University in 1980, with a B.S. degree in Zoology. After working as a medical research technician at the Duke Medical Center for a few years, he attended Vanderbilt University Law School, where he graduated in 1986 in the top 15% of his class. After four years of practice for business-oriented firms, in which he represented defendants and insurance companies in workers' compensation and other personal injury claims, along with a variety of other types of matters, Jay "jumped the fence" in 1990 and joined a plaintiffs' personal injury law firm in Greensboro, where he headed up the workers' compensation practice area and worked on other personal injury cases. After 10 years at that firm, in 2000, Jay opened his own law practice, Jay Gervasi, P.A., where he remains today.
Jay has been certified as a Specialist in workers' compensation by the North Carolina State Bar since 2000, when certification was first offered in that field. He has been the chair of the workers' compensation section of the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers, is a permanent member of the executive committee of that section and is listed in The Best Lawyers in America. Jay has been a frequent speaker at educational seminars for fellow lawyers and others, has written "Friend of the Court" briefs on behalf of the Academy of Trial Lawyers, and has been actively involved in advising and assisting other attorneys in their cases. Further, Jay, along with a number of his trial lawyer colleagues, has devoted significant time and resources to the political process, fighting to protect injured people in all aspects of the system. While engaging in these other activities, Jay has devoted his work to representing hundreds of seriously injured people, advising them about their decisions in the complicated variety of issues they face, and litigating their claims, before the trial courts, the Industrial Commission and the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Supreme Court. Jay has chosen to focus his practice on a relatively limited number of cases involving severe injuries and complex issues.
