One of the first graduates (1807) of UT (as East Tennessee College), Clement Clay was the first graduate to achieve regional and national prominence. He moved to Alabama in 1811 where he sat in the Territorial Legislature in 1817–19 and was one of the three-person committee named in 1819 to draft the constitution for the new state of Alabama.
He served as the first chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court (1820–23) and in 1829 was elected to the United States House of Representatives. In 1835 he became governor of Alabama. He resigned the governorship in 1837 to serve in the US Senate; he resigned in 1841. In 1862 he was arrested by federal troops and was temporarily confined in the Huntsville Courthouse. He was the author (1843) of A Digest of the Laws of Alabama.