Background
William James Wallace was born in Syracuse, N. Y. , the son of Elisha Fuller and Lydia (Wheelwright) Wallace.
William James Wallace was born in Syracuse, N. Y. , the son of Elisha Fuller and Lydia (Wheelwright) Wallace.
He obtained his secondary education in the private schools of Syracuse and his academic legal training in Hamilton College, obtaining the degree of LL. B. from that institution in 1857.
He was admitted to the bar of the state of New York, and began practice in Canastota, but he soon moved to Syracuse, where sometime later he became a member of the firm of Ruger, Wallace & Jenney. In 1873 Wallace was elected mayor of Syracuse. In the succeeding year he was appointed, by President Grant, United States district judge for the northern district of New York. When, in 1882, the position of judge of the second circuit court fell vacant, Wallace was promoted to that bench. At that time there was but one judge for the whole circuit, which was, in the magnitude of its business, the most important in the United States. Wallace himself stated that "the business of the Federal Courts in this city [New York] alone which devolved upon the circuit judge was, in my deliberate judgment, as extensive, as important, and as various as was allotted to any single judge in this country or in England to undertake". The pressure was somewhat relieved by Act of Congress on March 3, 1887, curtailing the jurisdiction of the circuit courts and providing for an additional circuit judge. That act was, in turn, followed by the act creating the circuit courts of appeal. On the establishment of these latter courts, Wallace was appointed presiding judge for the circuit, in which office he remained until his retirement in 1907, when he resumed active practice with the firm of Wallace, Butler & Brown. Further evidence of the respect in which he was held is furnished by his nomination in 1897 by the Republican party for the important position of chief judge of the court of appeals of New York (though he was not elected).
While to a later day his views may seem ultra-conservative, they were probably not more so than those held in general by a federal bench not noted for its liberalism.
Wallace was twice married: first to Josephine Robbins of Brooklyn, N. Y. , who died in 1874, and second, in April 1878, to Alice Wheelwright.
