Our History: Featured Alumni/ae: Almond, J. Lindsay, Jr., 1923

Governor of Virginia

J. Lindsay Almond was born in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1898. He attended Virginia Tech and served as a private in the Students Army Training Corps in 1917 and 1918 in World War I. He then taught school in Locust Grove, Virginia and served as a high school principal, before earning an LL.B. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1923. He entered private practice in Roanoke from 1923 to 1930. Almond was Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney of Roanoke, Virginia from 1930 to 1933, and was a state court judge to the Hustings Court of Roanoke from 1933 to 1945. He was then elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving in the 79th and 80th Congresses. Almond resigned his Congressional seat in 1948, when he was elected Attorney General of Virginia, a position he held until 1957. He argued the state's case for segregation of public schools before the Supreme Court in the case of Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which was consolidated with Brown v. Board of Education.

In 1957, he was elected Democratic Governor of Virginia and took office in January 1958 for a single term which ended in 1962. President John F. Kennedy nominated him to be a judge on the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals. He took senior status in 1973. When that court was eliminated in 1982 under the  Federal Courts Improvement Act, Judge Almond was reassigned to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit as a senior judge, a position he held until his death in 1986.