Steven T. Walther was an American lawyer from Reno, Nevada, who spent more than three decades in private practice and bar leadership before serving sixteen years as a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the independent agency that administers and enforces federal campaign finance law. An Independent, he chaired the Commission in 2009 and again in 2017. He died in Carson City, Nevada, on 27 September 2026, at the age of 83.
Walther was born in Reno on 18 July 1943. He studied at the University of Notre Dame, majoring in Russian, and graduated in 1965. He then earned his law degree at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall) in 1968, and was admitted to the Nevada bar that year and the California bar in 1969. His study of Russian later shaped a long interest in law reform and democracy building in the former Soviet Union.
In 1972 he co-founded a Reno law firm, Walther, Key, Maupin, Oats, Cox & LeGoy, known today as Maupin, Cox & LeGoy. He practised there for more than thirty years with an emphasis on litigation and remained a senior partner until he joined the FEC. Alongside his practice he became one of Nevada's most prominent figures in the organised bar. He served on the Board of Governors of the State Bar of Nevada and was its president from 1990 to 1991. He was also president of the Western States Bar Conference and of the National Caucus of State Bar Associations, chaired the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, the research arm of the American Bar Association (ABA), and sat on the ABA Board of Governors.
Much of his volunteer work focused on human rights and the rule of law. He was the first chair of the ABA Center for Human Rights, was appointed the ABA's Representative to the United Nations, and served on the executive board of the ABA Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI), which ran democracy building programmes, including work on fair and open election laws, in more than twenty countries. He was a trustee of and lecturer for the National Judicial College in the United States and in Russia, and lectured widely, principally in Russia, on the rule of law, human rights, litigation and international law. He was a member of the American Law Institute and the International Bar Association. Closer to home, from 1971 until his FEC appointment he served on the Nevada State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Walther was first sworn in as an FEC commissioner on 10 January 2006 as a recess appointee of President George W. Bush. His nomination was placed before the U.S. Senate in June 2007, but his recess term expired on 31 December 2007 before the Senate acted, leaving him off the Commission for the first half of 2008. On 24 June 2008 the Senate confirmed him unanimously, and on 27 June 2008 he was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to serve the balance of his statutory term. He served as Vice Chair for the rest of 2008, as Chair in 2009, as Chair again in 2017, as Vice Chair in the second half of 2020 and as Vice Chair for the first seven months of 2022. His service spanned the administrations of four presidents: George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
At the FEC he was known for his attention to due process and procedural fairness for respondents, his push for greater public disclosure and transparency about the agency's own actions, and his commitment to promoting democratic institutions worldwide. He announced in January 2022 that he would leave the Commission, and President Biden nominated Dara Lindenbaum to succeed him. Walther retired on 1 August 2022. Chairman Allen Dickerson said the Commission would "lose a unique and valuable voice", and Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub called him "a lifelong advocate for fair and transparent enforcement of the law".
After leaving Washington he returned to Nevada. He died in Carson City on 27 September 2026; the cause of death was not made public. His obituary was published in the Reno Gazette-Journal and shared by the State Bar of Nevada. He was survived by his wife, Helen Diane Walther, three children and seven grandchildren.
lit a candle 2h ago
