Doug Jones joined Whatley Drake in June, 2001, after serving as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. He was nominated for the position of U. S. Attorney by the President in September, 1997, and was confirmed by the Senate in November of that year. During his tenure as U. S. Attorney, Mr. Jones served as the Chair of the Law Enforcement Advisory Committee and was a member of the Health Care Fraud, White Collar Crime and Ethics sub-committees of the Attorney General's Advisory Committee.

In April of 2001, Mr. Jones was the lead prosecutor in the case of State of Alabama vs. Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr., in which the defendant, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, was convicted of the murder of four young African-American girls when a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on September 15, 1963. After joining Whatley Drake, Mr. Jones continued to work as a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Alabama to lead the prosecution team in the case of State of Alabama vs. Bobby Frank Cherry, the last of the trials involving the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. In May of 2002, Bobby Frank Cherry was also convicted of murdering the four young girls. Both Blanton and Cherry are serving life sentences in Alabama prisons.