Donald S. Russell

Who was Donald S. Russell?

Donald Stuart Russell was a Democratic Senator from South Carolina. He served from 1965 to 1966. He also served as the 107th Governor of South Carolina, 1963-1965. Russell was a protégé of former Secretary of State James F. Byrnes and served as Assistant Secretary of State for Administration from 1945 to 1947. From 1952 to 1957 he served as president of the University of South Carolina. He ran for governor in 1958 but lost the Democratic primary to Ernest F."Fritz" Hollings. Four years later he was elected governor.

He resigned as governor in 1965 upon the death of Sen. Olin D. Johnston and was appointed by the new governor, Robert E. McNair, to fill the vacancy created by Johnston's death. In the Democratic primary for the special election in 1966 to fill the remainder of Johnston's term, Russell again lost to Fritz Hollings. McNair, however, won a gubernatorial term of his own in 1966 by defeating the Republican Joseph O. Rogers, Jr., while Hollings won election to the rest of Johnston's Senate term by defeating Republican Marshall Parker.

In 1966, after his short Senate tenure ended, Russell was appointed U.S. District Judge for the District of South Carolina by President Lyndon B. Johnson to fill the vacancy created by the death of Russell's former law partner, Charles Cecil Wyche. In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed Russell to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, where he served until his death, on his 92nd birthday in 1998.