Katie Jo Luningham

Mrs. Katie Jo Luningham (née Baumgardner) serves as the Director of Litigation Counsel for Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc. Prior to joining Sally Beauty, Mrs. Luningham practiced civil and appellate litigation at Alston and Bird for several years. She specialized in representing institutions of higher education in litigation and arbitration, and also defended corporate clients in data privacy and cybersecurity litigation. Mrs. Luningham has been recognized for multiple years by The Best Lawyers “Ones to Watch” for commercial litigation and has received recognition for her commitment to pro bono legal service. She was also a member of the legal team that won the Education Law Association’s award for “Best Brief” in 2017.

Mrs. Luningham clerked for Judge Branch on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit from 2018-2019 and began her career as an attorney at Husch Blackwell in Kansas City, where she specialized in higher education litigation and regulatory compliance.

In 2015, Mrs. Luningham earned a JD, magna cum laude, from Notre Dame Law School, where she won the NDLS First-Year Moot Court Tournament and received the Dean’s Award for Legal Writing and Law of Education. In 2015, she won a Burton Distinguished Legal Writing Award, administered by the U.S. Library of Congress.

Mrs. Luningham earned a BA in University Scholars, summa cum laude with honors, from Baylor in 2011. A native of Kansas, she attended Baylor as a National Merit Scholar on a full academic scholarship.

She is married to Dr. Justin Luningham (BA ’09), an assistant professor of psychology at Texas Christian University. The Luninghams are members of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Fort Worth and have three children.