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Portrait photograph of Taylor Reveley

William & Mary President: W. Taylor Reveley III
Term Served:  Interim President, February 12, 2008 - September 5, 2008; President, September 5, 2008 - June 30 2018
Preceded by: Gene R. Nichol 2005 - 2008
Succeeded by: Katherine A. Rowe 2018 - Present

W. Taylor Reveley III (Walter Taylor Reveley III) was the twenty-seventh president of William & Mary. He served as the interim president of William & Mary from the resignation of President Gene R. Nichol on February 12, 2008, until being appointed President by the Board of Visitors on September 5, 2008. Reveley is the first interim president since Benjamin S. Ewell to be named President of William & Mary. Previously, he was the dean of the William & Mary Law School for almost a decade, serving from August 1998 until being named interim president. He was the John Stewart Bryan Professor of Jurisprudence at the Law School.

Reveley received his A.B. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1965. Afterward, he attended law school at the University of Virginia, receiving his J.D. in 1968, and clerked for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. in 1969. He has extensively studied and written about the constitutional division of the war powers between the President and Congress. Reveley is the author of War Powers of the President and Congress: Who Holds the Arrows and Olive Branch? (University of Virginia Press, 1981). In 2018, William & Mary awarded him an honorary doctorate of law.

Before joining William & Mary, Reveley practiced law for many years at Hunton & Williams, specializing in energy matters, especially those involving commercial nuclear power. He was the managing partner of the firm for nine years. Reveley has also spent a significant amount of time on non-profit organizations, serving on many education and cultural boards, including those of Princeton University (where he is a trustee emeritus), Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, St. Christopher's School, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, JSTOR, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Virginia Historical Society, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the Richmond Symphony, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) Foundation.

 

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This website contains the best available information from known sources at the time it was written. Unfortunately, many of the early original records of William & Mary were destroyed by fires, military occupation, and the normal effects of time. The information in this website is not complete, and it changes as we continue to research and uncover new sources.