Foxx was born on April 30, 1971, in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was raised by his mother, Laura Foxx, and his grandparents, James and Mary Foxx, and graduated from West Charlotte High School. He graduated from Davidson College, where he was the first African American student body president, in 1993. Foxx majored in history, and went on to earn a J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1996.

In 2001, he returned to Charlotte to work as a business litigator for Hunton & Williams. While a member of the city council, he retained his position as a litigator at Hunton & Williams, switching to part-time status.

After law school, Foxx returned to Charlotte to work for a short time at the Smith, Helms, Mullis, and Moore law firm, and left to become a clerk for Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. Later he worked for the United States Department of Justice and the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. In 2004, he was the campaign manager for Representative Mel Watt.

Foxx was first elected to the Charlotte City Council in 2005 to an at-large seat, and was re-elected in 2007. He won election as Charlotte’s 54th and youngest mayor in 2009 and was re-elected in 2011; he became the city’s first Democratic mayor since Harvey Gantt left office in 1987.

On April 29, 2013, President Barack Obama announced that he would nominate Foxx to the post of the Secretary of Transportation. On June 27, 2013, the Senate confirmed the nomination by a unanimous vote. Foxx resigned from his elected position as mayor to accept the federal appointment.

Foxx prepared and advocated for the Obama Administration’s first surface transportation bill, the Grow America Act, in 2014, and worked to get its congressional incarnation, the FAST Act, passed. He consolidated the Department’s financing programs and accelerated permitting policies. Foxx also put forth new rules governing the commercial use of drones, blueprinted a comprehensive national policy on autonomous vehicles, and launched the Department’s first Smart City Challenge, engaging more than 70 cities to develop their own strategies to incorporate new technologies into their transportation networks.

Foxx was the designated survivor for the 2015 State of the Union Address on January 20, 2015.

Foxx joined Lyft in October 2018 as the company’s chief policy officer.