Edmund Randolph was a lawyer and veteran of the Revolutionary War who served in the Continental Congress. He was the 7th Governor of Virginia, and, in that capacity, led Virginia's delegation to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. He presented the 15 "Resolves" of the Virginia Plan to the assembled delegates and served on the Committee of Detail which produced the first draft of the Constitution. He did not sign the Constitution, citing his disagreement with some of the changes to the Virginia Plan. However, he did support the Constitution during the Virginia ratification process. Washington appointed him Attorney General during his first term, and he succeeded Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State during Washington's second term.

Justice James Wilson was a Scottish-born lawyer and scholar. Wilson wrote an influential argument that Parliament's taxation of the American colonies was illegitimate because the colonies had no representation in Parliament. He was elected to the Continental Congress twice. In that capacity, he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was also a veteran of the Revolutionary War and a major contributor at the Constitutional Convention, where he served on the Committee of Detail (that produced the first draft of the Constitution). He is credited with being the principal author of the executive branch. As the first Professor of Law at the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania), Wilson taught the first course on the new Constitution to Washington and his Cabinet in 1789-90. Washington named Wilson as one of the first Associate Justices to the Supreme Court. Wilson was the first Justice to die in office.

George Wythe was born into a wealthy Virginia planter family and became a lawyer and a representative in the Virginia colony's House of Burgesses. He was the first Virginian to sign the Declaration of Independence and served as a member of the Continental Congress. He participated in Virginia's Constitutional Convention as well as serving as a delegate to the federal Constitutional Convention in 1787. In addition to being a judge, he was on faculty at the College of William and Mary, where his students included both Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall. At the 1787 Convention, Wythe served as the chair of the Rules Committee. He left the Convention to care for his dying wife before signing the Constitution, but worked to ensure its ratification in Virginia. Increasingly uncomfortable with the institution of slavery, Wythe emancipated all of his slaves at the end of the Revolutionary War.