Leonard Eugene Wales was born at Wilmington, Delaware, the son of John and Ann (Patten) Wales, and a descendant of Nathaniel Wales who came with his father, Nathaniel, from Yorkshire, England, to Boston in 1635. John Wales was prominent in public life in Delaware, and from 1849 to 1851 served as United States senator.
Leonard completed his preparatory studies at the Hopkins Grammar School, New Haven, Connecticut, and then entered Yale, where he was graduated in 1845.
Having studied law in his father's office in Wilmington, he was admitted to the bar on May 8, 1848. For the ensuing two years he gave much of his time to editorial work on the Delaware State Journal, organ of the Whig party, to which the Wales family adhered. In May 1849 he was appointed clerk of the United States circuit and district courts for Delaware and served as such until 1864. In 1853 and 1854 he was city solicitor of Wilmington, and in 1856 he took an active part in organizing the Republican party in Delaware. Upon President Lincoln's call for volunteers in 1861, Wales was among the first in the state to respond. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in Company E, 16t Delaware Volunteers, which was stationed along the line of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad, south of the Susquehanna River. After the expiration of his three months' term of enlistment, he returned to civil life, but in May 1863 he was appointed a member of the Delaware board of enrollment, which administered the national draft law. In September 1864 Gov. William Cannon appointed him as associate justice (for New Castle County) of the Delaware superior court. Entering upon his duties October 1, 1864, he held the office for nearly a score of years, functioning not only as a nisi prius judge and in the orphans' court but also, in accordance with the Delaware system, sitting en banc as a member of the court of general sessions of the peace and jail delivery, of the court of oyer and terminer, and of the court of errors and appeals. Upon assuming judicial station he ceased to participate in partisan politics but continued certain quasi-public activities. He was especially interested in the work of the Historical Society of Delaware and served for a number of years as its president. On March 10, 1884, upon nomination of President Arthur, Wales was confirmed as United States judge for the district of Delaware, and was sworn in four days later. Subsequently, for about three years, he took over the work of the judge of the New Jersey district, who had become incapacitated. It is said that only in a single instance were any of his decisions reversed upon appeal to a higher tribunal. His reported opinions indicate learning, logical reasoning, and clarity of expression. After the establishment of the circuit courts of appeal in 1891, he was regularly called to sit with its judges when they held sessions in his circuit. He continued performing his duties almost to the last, dying in his native city after less than a week's illness.
He was never married.
