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James “Jay” Randolph has been hired as Southampton County’s new community development and planning director, returning to Southampton after having served as assistant county administrator there from 2005-10.

Randolph succeeds Beth Lewis, who served in the developer/planning director role for 14 years and retired in May.

Southampton County Administrator Brian S. Thrower said, “We are very pleased and excited to have Jay come on board with the county as our new community development and planning director. Jay brings an ample amount of local government experience to the position and has the requisite educational qualifications needed to succeed. We believe Jay will be a great asset for the county and welcome him to our team.”

Randolph is originally from upstate New York but grew up in south Florida and has now lived in Isle of Wight County for 23 years, currently residing in Zuni.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in geography with a concentration in urban and regional planning from State University of New York, and he also has a master’s certificate from Virginia Tech in local government administration.

His work experience in local government has come exclusively in Virginia. He started his career in the planning and zoning arena by serving as a planner from 2000-03 in Isle of Wight County’s Department of Planning and Zoning.

Then he became the town of Windsor’s first full-time planning and zoning administrator and served in that role from 2003-05.

After this, he joined the Southampton County staff as assistant county admin, and because the county did not have a full-time planning staff at that point, among his many responsibilities were those that now belong to him again as the community development and planning director.

“As assistant administrator, I also did a lot of other projects and assignments as delegated by the county administrator and so forth, so I kind of had my hands full,” Randolph said. “However, the Board of Supervisors I want to say in 2008 approved the full-time planner position, and that’s when the county advertised and ultimately hired Beth Lewis, the former director.”

Lewis was the first full-time planner for the county, and Randolph was actually the one who hired her, which prompted him to note that things have “kind of come full circle now back with that.”

Randolph moved on from Southampton in 2010 to become the county administrator in Lunenburg County for a brief time and then departed local government work for a decade.

He came back to the work in April 2022 when he returned to the planning and zoning administrator position in Windsor.

“I had the opportunity to come back to local government to serve my second stint in the town of Windsor and was very pleased getting the Planning Commission and the Town Council really up to speed on a lot of the planning and zoning projects in the town of Windsor,” he said.

He served in that role until accepting his new position in Southampton.

“When this opportunity made itself available, I thought it would be a good fit not only for myself, personally and professionally, but as well as for Southampton County,” he said.

His first day on the job as Southampton’s community development and planning director was Friday, Oct. 11.

“I look forward to continuing to serve the citizens and businesses and the people of Southampton County,” he said. “Planning is about people, and that’s what we’re here for is public service and to assist the citizens and businesses to the best of our abilities.”