John Paul, Jr. (1883 - 1964)

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John Paul, Jr., (December 9, 1883 - February 13, 1964) was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a federal judge from Virginia.

He was born in Harrisonburg, Virginia, the son of U.S. District Court Judge John Paul. The younger Paul lived all his life on the family farm in Rockingham County, Virginia.

He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1903, with a degree in civil engineering, and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1906.

Paul had a private law practice in Harrisonburg from 1907 to 1917. He served as state senator, during the years 1911-1915, and 1919-1922. He entered the United States Army in May 1917 and served in the American Expeditionary Force from May 1918 to May 1919. He ran and lost in the Congressional elections of 1916 and 1918. He was elected to the 67th Congress in 1920 but voted out again in 1922. During 1923-1924 he was employed as a special assistant to the U.S. attorney general, the notorious Harry M. Daugherty. Later he served as United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia in the years 1929-1932.

A delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1912, 1916, 1920, and 1924, Paul was nominated by Herbert Hoover on December 15, 1931, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia. The Senate confirmed his nomination on January 11, 1932. When he went on the bench, he was the only judge in the Western District, which ranges from Cumberland Gap to Winchester, Virginia with seven courthouses.

Judge Paul presided over the 50-day trial of the Franklin County moonshine conspiracy, said to be the longest trial in Virginia history to that time.[1]

A second judgeship for the district was added in 1938. After the failed nomination of Floyd H. Roberts, and the brief tenure of Professor Armistead Mason Dobie who went on to the Court of Appeals, the position that was ultimately filled by Judge Alfred D. Barksdale, with whom Judge Paul worked as the only two W.D. Va. judges for over 17 years.

Judge Paul took senior status in 1958, and Dwight Eisenhower nominated Theodore Roosevelt Dalton to replace him. Judge Paul continued as a senior judge until his death in 1964.

To Judge Paul and his colleagues fell the task of implementing the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in desegregation lawsuits in the Western District of Virginia. Judge Paul sat on the panel that ordered the integration of the graduate schools of the University of Virginia in the Gregory Swanson case,[2] and he ordered the desegregation of the schools in the City of Charlottesville, Grayson County, and Warren County.[3]

In 1961, Judge Paul donated part of his family's farm to become the Paul State Forest.[4]

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ Greer, T. Keister (2002). The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935. History House. ISBN 0972235507. 
  2. ^ Richmond Times-Dispatch excerpt, September 20, 1950. University of Virginia. Retrieved on February 17, 2008.
  3. ^ See Goins v. County School Bd. of Grayson County, 186 F. Supp. 753 (W.D. Va. 1960); School Bd. of Warren County v. Kilby, 259 F.2d 497 (4th Cir. 1958); School Bd. of City of Charlottesville, Va. v. Allen, 240 F.2d 59 (4th Cir. 1957).
  4. ^ Ottobine's State Forest. Ottobine.com. Retrieved on October 22, 2007.

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