Waller Redd Staples

Biography

A native of Patrick County, Virginia, Staples attended the University of North Carolina for two years before enrolling at the College of William and Mary. After graduating from William and Mary in 1845, he moved to Montgomery County, Virginia and opened his own practice.

Between 1853 and 1854, Staples was a member of the Virginia General Assembly and, in 1862, he became a member of the Confederate House of Representatives. Re-elected in 1863, he served until the end of the war when he resumed his practice in Montgomery County.

Staples was elected to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia (today, the Supreme Court of Virginia) in February, 1870. However, a change in the political balance of power led to a clean sweep in 1882, when none of the sitting justices were re-elected. In 1884, Judge Staples served as a member of the committee to revise the civil and criminal laws of Virginia and from 1893 to 1894 he served as President of the Virginia Bar Association. Additionally, Staples was one of the revisors of the Code of Virginia of 1877. His nephew, Abram Penn Staples, was a member of the law faculty at Washington and Lee from 1904 until his death in 1913.