William Joseph Baxley was born in Dothan, Alabama, on June 27, 1941, the son of Keener and Lemma (Rountree) Baxley. He attended the University of Alabama Law School. When he was appointed district attorney for Houston County at age of twenty-five, he became the youngest person to hold that office.
Bill Baxley was elected Attorney General in 1970. During his two terms in that office Baxley aggressively prosecuted industrial polluters, strip miners, and corrupt elected officials. Baxley appointed the state's first African American assistant attorney general, Myron Thompson, who later became a federal judge. Among his accomplishments as attorney general was Baxley's successful prosecution of Ku Klux Klansman Robert Chambliss for his part in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, in which four young girls were killed.
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