In 1960, Hollowell and co-counsel Horace Ward won a victory in the Georgia Court of Appeals which secured the release of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Georgia State Prison. In another case, Hollowell and members of his firm prevented the execution of a 15-year-old black youth from Monticello, Georgia five days before it was scheduled to take place. Hollowell and civil rights champion C. B. King also defended Dr. King and hundreds of civil rights activists in the historic civil rights campaign in Albany, Georgia known as the Albany Movement.