How to dynamically add a style for text-align using jQuery

I'm trying to correct the usual IE bugs around CSS 2.1 and need a way to alter an elements style properties to add a custom text-align style.

Currently in jQuery you can do something like

$(this).width() or $(this).height() 

but I can't seem to find a good way to alter the text-align with this same approach.

The item already has a class and I set the text-align in that class with no luck. Is it possible to just add a text-align CSS attribute to this element after a class is defined?

I have something like this

$(this).css("text-align", "center"); 

just after my width adjustment and after I view this in firebug I see only "width" is the only property set on the style. Any help?

EDIT:

Whoa - big response to this question! A bit more detail around the problem at hand:

I'm tweaking the js source for jqGrid A3.5 to do some custom sub grid work and the actual JS I'm tweaking is shown below (sorry for using "this" in my examples above, but I wanted to keep this simple for brevity)

var subGridJson = function(sjxml, sbid) {
    var tbl, trdiv, tddiv, result = "", i, cur, sgmap,
    dummy = document.createElement("table");
    tbl = document.createElement("tbody");
    $(dummy).attr({ cellSpacing: "0", cellPadding: "0", border: "0" });
    trdiv = document.createElement("tr");
    for (i = 0; i < ts.p.subGridModel[0].name.length; i++) {
        tddiv = document.createElement("th");
        tddiv.className = "ui-state-default ui-th-column";
        $(tddiv).html(ts.p.subGridModel[0].name[i]);
        $(tddiv).width(ts.p.subGridModel[0].width[i]);
        trdiv.appendChild(tddiv);
    }
    tbl.appendChild(trdiv);
}

I've tried both of the below (from the answers provided) with no luck.

$(tddiv).width(ts.p.subGridModel[0].width[i]).at