Boyd Stewart Leedom was born in Alvord, Iowa, the son of Chester Nevius Leedom, a farmer, and Gertrude Emmaline Stewart. In 1907 Leedom moved to western South Dakota, where his parents' interest in politics, religion, and temperance causes deeply influenced his later career.
He attended public schools and Black Hills Teachers College before earning his LL. B. at the University of South Dakota in 1929.
Leedom began to practice law in Rapid City, South Dakota, in 1929. After stateside duty in the navy in World War II, he returned to his law practice and to civic and religious activities. Leedom served for two years in the South Dakota state senate and in 1950 unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for governor.
In 1951 he was appointed to the South Dakota Supreme Court. While on the state supreme court, Leedom was drawn into a series of labor disputes that brought him to the attention of Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell. Assigned to serve as a referee on the National Railroad Adjustment Board, Leedom ruled in about forty labor cases. While his decisions were attacked by the railroad brotherhoods as promanagement, his detached approach brought him favorable comment within the Eisenhower administration. Secretary Mitchell then advised President Eisenhower to nominate Leedom to the NLRB in February 1955. Leedom's relatively noncontroversial record reduced liberal opposition to his appointment, while his personal ties to South Dakota's congressional delegation, especially to conservative Senator Karl Mundt, blunted right-wing criticism. In November 1955 the president appointed Leedom chairman of the NLRB.
With a Republican majority, the Eisenhower NLRB issued rulings more to the liking of businessmen than had the Truman board. It expanded the right of employers to communicate with their employees during labor disputes, and it tightened the rules on permissible picketing and the secondary boycott. The NLRB under the previous Eisenhower chairman had restricted its jurisdiction to larger employers. Then, in 1957, the Supreme Court ruled that state courts could not assume labor cases governed by federal law, even if they had been rejected by the NLRB. The Leedom board subsequently tried to redefine its jurisdiction, but not until the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 were cases effectively parceled out between the states and the NLRB.
Leedom emerged as a moderate within the NLRB. As chairman, he devoted about half of his time to administrative problems, including budgetary and public relations questions. Possibly as a way of forestalling further congressional investigation, he announced in 1955 that some 300 additional field jobs with the NLRB would be labled "sensitive" and hence open to personnel review by the FBI. As presiding member, Leedom sought to avoid prolonged discussion and acrimony and to create a professional, judicial atmosphere within the NLRB. By the late 1950's, however, he warned against a breakdown of collective bargaining machinery and called for mutual restraint by labor and management. Charging the Leedom board with an antilabor bias, Democratic politicians frequently drew upon a lengthy 1956 indictment by Chicago labor lawyer Mozart Ratner, who had been associated with the NLRB during the Truman administration. Defenders of the board, including Leedom, responded that the appointees of a new administration were often accused of bias and that the Eisenhower board was merely correcting the excessively prolabor stance of the Truman administration. Although the publication of a letter written by Leedom in 1960 endorsing Senator Mundt (a frequent critic of labor leaders) brought some embarrassment, Leedom generally avoided open political activity. Confronted with a mounting caseload and increasing delays, the Leedom board hired a consulting firm to conduct a confidential efficiency study of the agency. The resulting McKinsey Report urged the board to delegate greater authority to regional offices and to stop dilatory behavior by labor and management representatives. Concerned about due process, Leedom and the board moved slowly in implementing the McKinsey recommendations, even after the Landrum-Griffin Act empowered the NLRB to delegate some of its powers. Meanwhile, Democratic congressman Roman Pucinski leaked the McKinsey Report to the press and began an attack upon Leedom and the board both for its delays and its alleged antilabor bias. In 1961 Pucinski chaired highly critical hearings on the Eisenhower board, but by then he had moderated his personal attacks on Leedom, who had endorsed a Kennedy-administration proposal for additional reforms of the NLRB.
Leedom's role with the NLRB changed during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Although Leedom remained a member, Kennedy named a new chairman in 1961 and quickly transformed the board with other appointments. The Kennedy NLRB reversed Eisenhower board decisions on picketing, secondary boycotts, and employer "free speech" rights during labor disputes. Leedom dissented in each of these rulings as well as in a 1961 decision (later upheld by the Supreme Court) approving the agency shop, a form of union security agreement whereby nonunion workers are required to pay the equivalent of union dues. While arguing that reversals of earlier decisions would contribute to instability in labor-management relations, Leedom stressed that the overall pattern of the 1960's rulings was not as antibusiness as critics suggested. Although Leedom had Senator Mundt's support for a third five-year term in 1964, President Johnson did not reappoint him. Instead, Leedom became a trial examiner for the board. In 1967 he held that the J. P. Stevens Company had blatantly violated the law when it fired southern textile workers for unionizing. Leedom thought of his attempts at harmonizing labor-management relations as an extension of his activities as a Christian layman. A devout Methodist Sunday-school teacher, Leedom promoted the Billy Graham Evangelistic Crusade. He also served as president of International Christian Leadership, a lay organization best known for initiating the prayer-breakfast tradition. He died in Arlington, Virginia.
In 1927 Lee married Irene Cecil Robertson. They had three children.
