Bill Dolan, who ran twice for attorney general in the 1990s, has died.
Dolan died May 28 after a brief illness, according to an obituary posted on Legacy.com. He was 80.
Dolan, who was from Northern Virginia, was a prominent attorney before he entered politics. He served as president of the Virginia State Bar and in 1990 was appointed by Norfolk judges to prosecute a case against one of their own on charges of forgery and malfeasance for having a local prosecutor’s traffic ticket altered. That was considered unusual — typically, other prosecutors are called in whenever local prosecutors recuse themselves — but the appointment spoke to Dolan’s prominence in the legal world.
As special prosecutor, Dolan secured a felony conviction — the first time a sitting judge in Virginia had been convicted of a crime — although it was overturned on appeal. The judge was removed from the bench, eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, and wound up serving about three months in jail, according to an Associated Press report at the time.
The case figured heavily in Dolan’s two unsuccessful statewide campaigns. In 1993 and 1997, Dolan was the Democratic nominee for attorney general, an unusual situation where the party nominated an unsuccessful candidate for the same office in the next election.
Democrats touted Dolan’s stature as a respected legal titan; Republicans faulted him for billing the state $313,000 for his work (he eventually got paid less than that). Dolan said that the state knew his hourly rate when he was appointed and that prosecuting a sitting judge required more legal work because it broke new ground. Republicans criticized the fees as excessive and said the fact that the case was overturned on appeal showed Dolan’s inexperience as a prosecutor — although the verdict was overturned because of a faulty jury instruction from the judge.
When the former judge eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced, the Daily Press in Newport News said “the denouement of the case is a vindication for special prosecutor William D. Dolan III.” Dolan practiced law right up until his final illness and was so proud of the Norfolk case that his law firm’s website cited it in the first paragraph describing his experience.
Dolan ran for statewide office at a time when the state’s political tides were running against Democrats; neither his politics nor his soft-spoken demeanor fit the political climate of the times. In 1993, Dolan lost to Republican Jim Gilmore by 56.1% to 43.9%. In 1997, he lost to Republican Mark Earley, 57.5% to 42.4%.
While Dolan was never elected to public office, he had a long resume of other public service, including a stint as chairman of the state board that oversees Virginia’s community colleges. In a tribute included in his obituary, Barbara Keenan, senior judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, said of Dolan: “Because of what he did for women and minorities, as far as I’m concerned, he was the most impactful lawyer in Virginia in my lifetime.”
Visitation will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday at the Fairfax Memorial Funeral Home in Fairfax. A funeral Mass will be held at 10 a.m. Monday at St. Ann Catholic Church in Arlington.