John Waller

John H. Waller, Jr. (b. 1937) was a justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. In 1994 a vacancy became available on the Court, and Justice Waller was elected on May 11, 1994, to fill that seat. On June 29, 1994, he was qualified as a Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. He is a Democrat. He retired in late 2009 and was replaced by Kaye Hearn.^[1]

Legal education

A native of Mullins, South Carolina, Justice Waller attended Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. In 1959, after graduation with an A.B. degree in psychology, he reported to Fort Knox, Kentucky, as a second lieutenant and was discharged from active service the next year. Through years of reserve and national guard service, he was finally discharged as a Captain. Upon leaving active military service, he enrolled in the Law School at the University of South Carolina in 1960 and received his JD in 1963.^[2]

Career

After passing the bar exam, Justice Waller began a general law practice in his hometown of Mullins. In 1967, Justice Waller was elected to the SC House of Representatives, where he served for five terms. In the 1973-74 session he was elected as Assistant House Majority Leader and was also elected to the State Reorganization Committee. In the 1975-76 session, he was elected as House Majority Leader. In 1976, instead of offering for re-election to the SC House of Representatives, he ran for a seat in the South Carolina Senate and was successful. While in the fourth year of that senate term, he ran for the position of Circuit Court Judge for the Twelfth Judicial Circuit to fill an unexpired term. He was elected and qualified on June 6, 1980.

While a circuit judge from 1980 to 1994, he was also a member of and later chairman of both the Circuit Court Judges Advisory Committee and the Judicial Standards Committee.