His parents, Jennie Tomlin and Jeff Walden, had been children when emancipated from slavery after the American Civil War.

[5] Walden also defended in a federal legal suit, lasting six years, which gained equal pay for black public school teachers in Atlanta in 1943.

[7] Walden, alongside the NAACP, filed suit in federal district court on behalf of a black teacher.

[8] Walden represented Horace Ward in 1952 in the first lawsuit in the state in federal court for a black seeking admission to the University of Georgia.

Ward later served as counsel for students in a 1961 suit that successfully gained them admission to the University of Georgia.

That year, he was appointed by President John F. Kennedy as a member of the American Battle Monuments Commission.