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The N.C. Department of Transportation announced Friday that Wayne Goodwin has been named as the new Commissioner of the Division of Motor Vehicles.

“Wayne is a distinguished public servant who understands how to manage a customer-facing agency and the need to deliver results,” said Transportation Secretary J. Eric Boyette. “Wayne’s background as an attorney and knowledge of motor vehicle statutes will be invaluable to our agency.”

Goodwin, the former State Insurance Commissioner and a former state legislator, replaces previous Commissioner Torre Jessup who stepped down in November to join the NC Department of Information Technology as Chief Operating Officer.

Goodwin served as Insurance Commissioner for eight years, overseeing the agency that regulates insurance rates as products as well as investigating fraud. He is an attorney who also served four terms in the N.C. House of Representatives from 1997-2004. He joined the Department of Insurance in 2005, serving as Assistant General Counsel and Assistant Commissioner of Insurance until being elected to serve as State Insurance Commissioner from 2009-2017.

Since 2017, Goodwin has worked as President and CEO of Seaboard Strategic Consulting where he has provided counsel to insurance entities, businesses, associations and consumers.

Goodwin, a native of Hamlet, twice graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – first in 1989 with honors as a Morehead Scholar and a U.S. Senate/William Randolph Hearst Scholar and again in 1992 from the School of Law. He now resides in Raleigh with his two children. His wife, Melanie Wade Goodwin, was an attorney and former state legislator who died last year.

Goodwin will begin in this role on Jan. 18.