Lewis Spiller Minter

Biography

Lewis S. Minter served as assistant professor of law at Washington and Lee University from 1957 to 1959. He taught Damages, Domestic Relations, Equity, and Security. He was hired to teach Theodore Smedely’s classes during Smedely’s one year leave, but was kept on for a second year.

Lewis Spiller Minter was born in 1926 in Blacksburg, Virginia and earned his A.B. degree from Roanoke College in 1949. He is the nephew of the late Josephine Katherine Minter Almond, wife of J. Lindsay Almond, the 56th governor of Virginia. Minter was brought up in the Almond home and is listed as a survivor in both of the Almonds’ obituaries.

Minter worked as an announcer and in sales for Roanoke, Virginia radio stations WSLS and WDBJ. He held other jobs in sales and advertising before he entered the Washington and Lee University law school. There he earned his LL.B degree in 1957, the same year that Almond was elected to his tumultuous term as Virginia governor. In addition to his law studies, Minter worked almost full-time at a Lexington radio station during his law school days to support his wife and two children, and to pay for his education.

In 1972 he joined the legal staff of the Virginia State Corporation Commission. In 1988 he was elevated to SCC Solicitor General, a position he held until his retirement in 1991. He lives in Richmond, Virginia.