Attorney General of Alabama

Gallion was elected Attorney General in 1958 as a Democrat for the 1959–1963 term of office. During his first term in office Gallion spoke at a Montgomery County Citizens Council gathering, condemning the leadership of the Congress of Racial Equality as communists. During the pro-segregation event held at the state coliseum (now known as Garrett Coliseum) he went on to characterize Freedom Riders as "a foolish group of meddlers, bleeding hearts, publicity seekers, and assorted misfits."^[2]

In-eligible to seek a second consecutive term in 1962, he opted to run for governor but lost the Democratic primary to George C. Wallace. He successfully sought re-election to his old office of Attorney General four years later in 1966. Prior to the 1970 elections, the state legislature changed the law allowing statewide elected officials to serve a second consecutive term. In what was considered an upset, he lost re-nomination in 1970 to Bill Baxley, then the Houston County District Attorney.^[3] In the primary campaign, Baxley had successfully created a widely viewed public impression, whether accurate or not, that he himself would be a better ally of George Wallace.

Gallion opposed school integration. In 1970, while serving his second term as Attorney General, Gallion along with the Attorneys General of Louisiana (Jack P. F Gremillion) and Mississippi (A.F. Summer) filed a legal brief in a case that would mandate that Pasadena schools integrate. The three Southern lawyers did not agree with the Brown v. Board of Education decision but their states were already required to abide by the law. Gallion, Gremillion, and Summer hoped that if states outside the South were also required to desegregate there would be farther reaching resistance by white families and "the operation of schools [would] be returned to the hands of local people". The friend of the court brief admits “the ultimate goal of this honorable court and the Movants herein are perhaps not the same. The ultimate goal of the Movants is to get the Federal Courts out of the operation of our schools."^[4]

During his tenure as Attorney General, Gallion successfully led litigation that established Alabama's offshore oil and gas rights. This helped the state later establish what is now a multimillion-dollar trust fund.