Tim Kaine - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Kaine was born at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Mary Kathleen (née Burns) and Albert A. Kaine, a welder and the owner of a small iron-working shop. He has Irish ancestry and was raised in a Catholic family. Kaine grew up in the Kansas City area and graduated from Rockhurst High School in Kansas City, Missouri.

Kaine graduated from the University of Missouri with a B.A. in economics in 1979. Kaine was a Coro Foundation fellow in Kansas City in 1978. He attended Harvard Law School, taking a year-long break during law school to work with the Jesuit order as a Catholic missionary in Honduras. Kaine is fluent in Spanish as a result of his year in Honduras. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1983 with a Juris Doctor, and was admitted to the Virginia Bar. He clerked for Judge R. Lanier Anderson on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1984, Kaine married former Richmond Juvenile Court Judge Anne Holton. Holton is the daughter of former Virginia governor A. Linwood Holton, Jr. Kaine and Holton have three children, Nat, Woody, and Annella.

Kaine practiced law in Richmond for 17 years, specializing in representing people who had been denied housing opportunities because of their race or disability. He was recognized by local, state, and national organizations for his advocacy of fair housing. He also taught legal ethics for six years at the University of Richmond Law School. More than ten years into his legal career in 1994, he was elected to the city council of the independent city of Richmond from the portion of the city in which he resided under Richmond's system of nine wards.

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