A member of the Board of Trustees since July 2022, Randy has had a long interest in education and working with young people, having served on the boards of numerous other charitable organizations from the Board of Trustees of Children’s Hospital of Richmond to the Board of the Virginia Mentoring Partnership and the Board of the College of William & Mary Endowment Association. He has been a judge on the Court of Appeals of Virginia since 2006. Prior to his service on the Court of Appeals, Judge Beales was a partner in the 90-year-old law firm of Christian & Barton, LLP. Prior to practicing law there, he served as the 41st Attorney General of Virginia. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, then-Attorney General Beales was named by the Governor of Virginia to the Commonwealth’s Security and Preparedness (Counter-terrorism) Task Force, where he was Chairman of the Committee that dealt with protection of state and university facilities and with planning for the smooth continuity of government in the event of such an attack in the future. He had also served as Chief Deputy Attorney General of Virginia from 1998 to 2001. Randy’s career has been both in government and in the private practice of law. At Christian & Barton, he concentrated his practice in administrative law and legislative and governmental affairs – and also in trusts and estates law, estate planning, and education law. In addition to his public service in Virginia, Randy also served in Washington – first in the General Counsel’s Office and Office of the U.S. Secretary of Education and then at the White House as Deputy Associate Director of Policy Development.
Randy graduated with high honors in government from the College of William and Mary, where he served as President of the student body and as an Aide to the President of William and Mary. He received his juris doctor degree from the University of Virginia Law School. He is from Boydton in Southside Virginia and attended the Mecklenburg County Public Schools, graduating as salutatorian of his high school class. Randy and his wife Julie, a physician, are the parents of five children – three daughters and two sons. His younger son Burke is a 2021 graduate of Hargrave.