William Lockhart Garwood

William Lockhart Garwood (October 29, 1931 – July 14, 2011) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Education and career

Born in Houston, Texas, to Wilmer St. John Garwood (1896–1987) and Ellen Burdine Clayton (1903–1993), Garwood was named after his maternal grandfather, William Lockhart Clayton, a Houston cotton merchant and, as undersecretary of state for economic affairs, a principal architect of the post-World War II Marshall Plan.

Garwood received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University in 1952 and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Texas School of Law in 1955. Upon graduating first in his law school class, he clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for John Robert Brown, a judge whom he would later count as a colleague on that same court. He served for three years as a JAG officer in the United States Army and then returned to Austin, Texas, where he entered private practice with the firm of Graves, Dougherty, Hearon, Moody & Garwood.

State judicial service

On November 15, 1979, Garwood was appointed to the Supreme Court of Texas by Governor Bill Clements and became the first Republican to serve on that court since the end of Reconstruction. Notably, his father had served for a decade on the Texas high court, from January 14, 1948, to December 31, 1958, and is still regarded as one of Texas's finest jurists. The younger Garwood's tenure was shorter-lived however, ending on December 31, 1980.