John E. Wall was born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1931. He received his B.S. in Government from Boston College in 1954. Following several years of military service, he received his LL.B from Columbia University School of Law in 1960, and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1961. He then became a Trial Attorney for the Organized Crime Section for the Department of Justice from 1963 to 1965 while furthering his education at Georgetown University where he received his LL.M in the Class of 1965, the same year he was admitted to the Bar of both District of Columbia and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wall's career included service as a Special Trial Assistant to the US. Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1965 to 1969, as well as Assistant United States Attorney, Federal District of Massachusetts from 1966 to 1969. In 1968, while serving as an Assistant United States Attorney, Wall took part in prosecuting the "Boston Five" (Benjamin Spock, William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber, and Marcus Raskin) for encouraging Vietnam War draft resistors. He left the Justice Department during the Nixon administration, and then spent over 35 years in private practice as a defense attorney. He practiced in the areas of criminal law, white-collar crime, and drug-related criminal litigation. He was a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers.
Wall married Jane A. (Lyness) Wall in 2000. He died in Peabody, Massachusetts in 2007.
