William Byrd Traxler, Jr.
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William Byrd Traxler, Jr. (born May 1948) is a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
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[edit] Early life and education
A native of Greenville, South Carolina, Traxler earned a bachelor's degree from Davidson College in 1970 and a law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1973.
[edit] Professional career
Traxler practiced law in Greenville, South Carolina from 1973 until 1974. He worked as a criminal prosecutor in the Office of the Solicitor for South Carolina's 13th Judicial Circuit from 1975 to 1981. From 1981 until 1985, Traxler served as Solicitor for the 13th Judicial Circuit, where he was the circuit's chief criminal prosecutor. In 1985, Traxler was elected by the General Assembly of South Carolina to be a state circuit court judge, where he served until becoming a federal judge in 1992.
[edit] Federal judicial service
On November 14, 1991, Traxler was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to be be a judge on the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on February 27, 1992.
On July 10, 1998, President Clinton nominated Traxler to the Fourth Circuit to replace Judge Donald Stuart Russell, who had died on February 22, 1998. The Senate unanimously confirmed Traxler in a voice vote on September 28, 1998.
[edit] Political involvement
On September 16, 1998, the Washington Post's political gossip columnist Al Kamen reported that Traxler wrote in his questionnaire to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during his nomination process to the U.S. District Court in 1992 that his only previous political involvement had included distributing leaflets and putting up signs for Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond during Thurmond's 1972 and 1978 re-election campaigns. However, the Post also noted that Traxler wrote in his questionnaire to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during his appeals court process in 1998 that his past political involvement had included making phone calls, distributing printed material and putting up signs for Thurmond and also working for Democrats such as former South Carolina Gov. John C. West in 1970, former Gov. Richard W. Riley in 1978 and Sen. Ernest Hollings in 1980. The Post skeptically hinted that Traxler's varied questionnaire responses on political involvement were the result of the fact that a Republican president had nominated him in 1992 but that a Democratic president nominated him in 1998. "Well, maybe (Traxler) just forgot in 1992 about the phone calls he made for the Democrats and he thought he worked for Thurmond in 1978 when it was actually Riley," Kamen wrote.
