Attorney profile
Attorney Chris Adkins (Christopher Adkins) — NC DWI Defense Lawyer
Chris Adkins (Charles Christopher Adkins) is a North Carolina attorney and co-founder of Adkins & Purkey, PLLC, with offices in Huntersville (Lake Norman) and Locust (Stanly County). Before he defended people charged with DWI, he was a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer trained on the Intox EC/IR II, the Alco-Sensor and standardized field sobriety tests, and he made several hundred DWI arrests. He knows how a DWI case is built because he used to build them.
From DWI officer to DWI defense attorney
Chris Adkins served as a patrol officer with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department from 2007 to 2013, including several years on a direct response team. His DWI training covered the Intox EC/IR II breath-test instrument, the Alco-Sensor portable breath tester and the NHTSA standardized field sobriety test battery: horizontal gaze nystagmus, the walk-and-turn and the one-leg stand. He earned the North Carolina Department of Justice Intermediate Law Enforcement Certificate in 2009 and the Advanced Law Enforcement Certificate in 2013.
That experience shapes how he reviews a DWI today. He reads a DWI report the way it was written: the reason for the stop, the clues an officer is trained to look for, the order of the tests, the observation period before a breath test, and the paperwork that must line up afterward. When something does not match the training, the statute or the video, he knows where to look.
Military service
Christopher Adkins served more than nine years as a combat engineer officer in the North Carolina Army National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve (2009–2018), leaving as a Captain. He trained at Fort Knox, Officer Candidate School and the U.S. Army Engineer Officer School at Fort Leonard Wood, and deployed to Kuwait in 2012–2013 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, where he managed construction and engineering projects after the drawdown from Iraq.
Education and admissions
Law degree, 2006.
Graduate study in criminal justice, 2009.
MBA, 2022.
Boone, North Carolina, 2003.
Licensed in North Carolina; admitted to the U.S. District Courts for the Western, Middle and Eastern Districts of North Carolina and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Certified Superior Court, Family Financial and Estates & Guardianships mediator.
Author
With law partner Chris Purkey, Chris Adkins wrote Charged with DWI in North Carolina? A Practical Guide to the Stop, the Science, the DMV, and the Defense. He is also the author of The Book on Divorce in North Carolina and the children’s book I Live in Two Homes Now (2021). On this site he writes and reviews the NC DWI article library, the DWI Resource Center and the North Carolina DWI case-law and statute library.
Adkins & Purkey, PLLC
Talk with Chris Adkins about your DWI
Bring your citation, DMV paperwork and questions. Huntersville and Locust offices, serving courts across North Carolina.
Attorney advertising. Prior results and background do not guarantee a similar outcome. General information, not legal advice.