Jamie Ross (Law & Order)
Jamie Ross was a fictional character on the TV drama Law & Order, portrayed by Carey Lowell from 1996 to 1998. She also appeared in the short-lived L&O spinoff Law & Order: Trial By Jury.
A former defense attorney, Ross entered the Manhattan District Attorney's office in 1996 as an Assistant District Attorney, replacing Claire Kincaid, who had been killed in a car accident. She initially had a rocky relationship with Executive Assistant DA Jack McCoy, both because he was still mourning Kincaid, who had been his lover, and because McCoy's penchant for bending trial rules clashed with her liberal idealism and sense of legal ethics.
While the two never saw perfectly eye-to-eye, however, they eventually grew to be close, trusted friends; when McCoy was called before the New York Bar association's Disciplinary Committee in 1998, for example, Ross refused to testify against him, even though the misconduct charges stemmed from a case which they had disagreed on vehemently. McCoy returned the favor a year later, after Ross had left the DA's office, by testifying on her behalf when she herself was brought up on charges of misconduct.
In 1997, a bitter custody battle with Ross' ex-husband over their daughter threw her personal and professional life into disarray. For the next year, the brutal litigation her ex-husband (who was also a lawyer, for whom she used to work) put her through left her with less and less time to devote to her job. She left the DAs office in 1998 to get remarried and find a job that gave her more time to be with her family. She was replaced by Abbie Carmichael.
The next time Ross and McCoy shared a courtroom, in 1999, it was as adversaries; once again a defense attorney, she was representing a client McCoy was prosecuting for murder. When McCoy discovered she had provided legal advice to a man previously incarcerated for the crime, however, Ross recused herself and went to the Disciplinary Committee, who eventually exonerated her with help from McCoy's testimony on her behalf.