Walter E. Hoffman

Walter E. Hoffman was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, and graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in 1928 and the Washington and Lee School of Law in 1931. Hoffman began his practice of the law in Norfolk, Virginia. Hoffman ran as the Republican candidate for Attorney General on the statewide ticket with Ted Dalton in 1953. President Eisenhower appointed Hoffman to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in 1954. In 1957 rulings from the federal bench, Hoffman struck down the state's pupil placement law as unconstitutional and ordered seventeen black students enrolled in all-white public schools in the city of Norfolk in September 1958. Hoffman remained on the federal bench from 1954 until his death in 1996.