John Angus was born on September 4, 1946, in Cleveland, Ohio, a major industrial city on the southern shore of Lake Erie. His education, naval service, and legal practice all took place in the United States, in Ohio, Florida, the District of Columbia, and Virginia.
John Angus's education included study at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. The institution was chartered in 1910 as a normal school for teacher training under the Lowry Normal School Bill and opened in 1914 as Bowling Green State Normal School. It was designated a university in 1935, after adding graduate programs and a college of business administration.
He received a Bachelor of Arts with honors from Saint Leo College in 1980. Saint Leo was founded in 1889 by the Order of Saint Benedict and is recognized as the first Catholic college in Florida. The college conferred its first bachelor's degrees in 1967, and its campus lies in Saint Leo, Florida, about 25 miles north of Tampa.
He earned a Juris Doctor from the Washington College of Law, American University, in 1986. The school was founded in 1896 by Ellen Spencer Mussey and Emma Gillett, and it is considered the first law school founded by women. It became a professional division of American University in 1949 and is approved by the American Bar Association.
Delta Theta Phi, a professional law fraternity, is also documented in his educational record. The fraternity traces its roots to 1900 at the Cleveland Law School, became a national organization in 1904, and took its present name in 1913 through a merger of predecessor law fraternities.
From 1966 to 1986 John Angus served in the United States Navy with the rank of senior chief petty officer, a senior enlisted grade. The Navy, the naval service of the United States, was established in 1775 during the American Revolution, and its enlisted ranks are organized into petty officer grades.
In 1987 he was admitted to the Virginia bar and to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In 1988 he was admitted to practice before the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The Virginia State Bar is the integrated bar that regulates lawyers in Virginia under the Supreme Court of Virginia.
He has worked as a partner of the Law Offices of Raymond B. Ben Zinger, Professional Corporation, in Arlington, Virginia. The firm's practice areas, in his profile, include general civil practice, commercial litigation, domestic relations, personal injury, criminal matters, corporate work, real estate, and wills, trusts, and estates.
John Angus is a member of the American Bar Association, the national professional association for lawyers in the United States, which was founded in 1878. He also belongs to the Fairfax County Bar Association and the Arlington County Bar Association, local bar associations serving lawyers in northern Virginia.
His membership also includes the Virginia State Bar, the integrated bar that regulates the legal profession in Virginia. Membership in such bodies connects practicing lawyers with professional standards, continuing legal education, and the regulation of legal practice in their jurisdictions.
