George Commey Mills-Odoi

George Commey Mills-Odoi was the first Ghanaian Attorney-General of the Republic of Ghana and a Supreme Court justice, and later chaired the Mills-Odoi committee on public service pay. He was born in James Town, Accra, on 29 June 1916 and died on 4 August 1988.

He was head boy at Accra Academy and taught there before joining the civil service as a clerk in the law courts in 1938. In 1947 he went to London, was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1951 and built a large practice in Kumasi from his Tron Chambers.

He was junior counsel to Attorney-General Geoffrey Bing at the Granville Sharp inquiry, became a High Court judge in 1960 and the first Ghanaian to be both Solicitor-General and Director of Public Prosecutions, and in 1961 the first Ghanaian Attorney-General. He sat on the Supreme Court from 1962 to 1966 and acted as Chief Justice in 1965. After the coup he was Judge Advocate General of the Armed Forces from 1966 to 1982, chaired the 1967 committee on the structure and pay of the public services and the Incomes Commission, and was chancellor of the Anglican Diocese of Accra.