Judge Rhynette Northcross Hurd is presiding judge for Division 5 of Shelby County Circuit Court in Memphis, Tennessee. Formerly she was a mediator, arbitrator, and special master at Ridder Hurd PLLC, a firm she co-founded with Judge Lorrie Ridder.

Prior to her work as a mediator, Judge Hurd was a transactional attorney at International Paper Company and manager of litigation and E&O claims at Sedgwick Claims Management Services. She has taught Federal Courts, Civil Procedure, and Legal Methods as an adjunct professor at Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law. Before law school, Judge Hurd was an English professor, most recently at the University of Memphis.

In addition to having served on numerous non-profit boards including the Memphis Child Advocacy Center and Leadership Memphis, Judge Hurd has served on the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners and the Board of Trustees of The University of Tennessee and Memphis College of Art. As an assistant to the Board of Law Examiners, she wrote and graded bar exam questions for over twenty years. Currently, she is vice chair of the Board of Trustees of Mount Holyoke College.

Judge Hurd holds a B.A. in English Composition from Mount Holyoke; a Master of Arts in Teaching from Harvard University Graduate School of Education; a Ph.D. in English Education from George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University; and a J.D. from the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at The University of Memphis. She was editor-in-chief of the 1990-91 Memphis State Law Review and judicial law clerk to the Honorable Bailey Brown, U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit. She is an Emeritus Member of the Leo Bearman, Sr. American Inn of Court, was elected a Fellow of the Memphis Bar Foundation, and received the 2015 Chancellor Charles A. Rond Memorial Award as Outstanding Judge of the Year.

Judge Hurd has two sons, a granddaughter, and a grandson.