John B. Waters Jr. (1952, 1961) is former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority board of directors.

Paul C. Pritchard (1971) is founder and executive director of the National Park Trust.

Matthew G. Smith (1909) was an attorney and bankruptcy judge in Fort Worth, Texas.

Clyde M. York (1935) was president of the Tennessee Farm Bureau and state commissioner of agriculture. The Clyde M. York Veterinary Teaching Hospital on the agricultural campus at Knoxville is named for him.

Jessie Wooten Harris (1908) was dean of the UT College of Home Economics in Knoxville. She was chief of the community nutrition division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and president of the American Home Economics Association.

Edward Terry Sanford, who graduated in 1883, was a U.S. Supreme Court justice from 1923 to 1930.

James Percy Priest attended UT in Knoxville in 1923. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1940 to 1956.

Thomas A.R. Nelson graduated in 1828 and served in the U.S. House of Representatives and on the Tennessee Supreme Court. He was counsel to President Andrew Johnson during his impeachment trial in 1868.

Ed Jones attended UT Junior College (now UT Martin) and graduated from UT in Knoxville in 1934. He was Tennessee commissioner of agriculture from 1949 to 1952 and served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1969 to 1989.

Thomas G. Hull (1951) was chief U.S. district judge in Greeneville, Tennessee. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1955.