J. Harvie Wilkinson III is a circuit judge and former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  He served as law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., and was a professor of law at the University of Virginia and editor of the editorial page of the Virginian-Pilot. He was appointed circuit judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in August 1984, appointed chief judge for the Fourth Circuit in February 1996, and is considered a top prospect for the United States Supreme Court. Judge Wilkinson graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University and received his law degree from the University of Virginia.

He is the author of several books: Harry Byrd and the Changing Face of Virginia Politics, 1968; Serving Justices: A Supreme Court Clerk’s View 1974; From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration, 1979; and One Nation Indivisible: How Ethnic Separatism Threatens America, 1997.