William Bradford Reynolds

William Bradford Reynolds (June 21 or July 21, 1942 – September 14, 2019) was an American attorney who served as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division from 1981 to 1988.

Reynolds was Senior Counsel in BakerBotts Antitrust and Competition division.

Education
Reynolds graduated with a LL.B. from Vanderbilt University Law School in 1967 where he was Order of the Coif and Editor-in-Chief of the Vanderbilt Law Review. In 1964, he received a B.A. from Yale University.

Civil rights
To many civil rights proponents in the 1980s Reynolds was the quintessence of Reagan-era policies against civil rights enforcement. The civil rights division of the Justice Department was created by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1957. The Washington Post wrote in 1988 that Reynolds "will have a place in the history books as the first assistant attorney general for civil rights to try to get the federal government, local governments and even the courts to halt a wide range of established civil rights reforms, from affirmative action to busing." According to Nicholas Katzenbach:

"The department is supposed to defend the disadvantaged, the people who are victims of discrimination. Either Mr. Reynolds doesn't understand what civil rights is all about or he is not interested in the pursuit of equality. Rights for Americans seems to him to mean rights for white males."

The Senate Judiciary Committee refused to confirm him when he was nominated for associate attorney general. He was called "mean spirited", "rigid" and the "Scrooge of the Justice Department", "the principal architect of a comprehensive attack on our civil rights laws" and an "ideologue", with a "lack of respect for the Supreme Court and Congress".

Death
He died of cancer on September 14, 2019, in Seabrook Island, South Carolina at age 77.