Arch Alfred Moore Jr. (April 16, 1923 – January 7, 2015) was an American lawyer and Republican politician from West Virginia.

[5] He briefly attended Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, before he was drafted for World War II service.

Moore was left for dead for two days[citation needed] in a German farmer's beet field[5] after 33 of the 36 members of his platoon died in battle.

In 1954, Moore made his first run for the US Congress, challenging incumbent Democratic Congressman Bob Mollohan, but lost.

Furthermore, he pressured the West Virginia legislature to increase workers compensation benefits by 75% and helped to settle a national strike of coal miners.

[24] Moore's first two terms as governor are best remembered for improvements in the state's highway system and for the Buffalo Creek Flood disaster.

In 1975 Moore and his 1972 campaign manager were accused by federal prosecutors of extorting $25,000 from the president of a holding company seeking a state charter for a new bank.

In the last week of his second term in 1977, Moore accepted a $1 million payment from Pittston Coal Company to settle accounts from the Buffalo Creek Disaster.

The government had been warned as early as the late 1960s of the instability of the Buffalo Creek gob dams, yet the state failed to take measures to prevent the accident from occurring.

Several hundred properties were purchased via eminent domain by the state for the right-of-way and a two lane road was reconstructed back up the hollow.

Moore had also made a promise to residents of Buffalo Creek Hollow to construct a community center as part of the rebuilding effort.

Arnold & Porter, a Washington, D.C. law firm, handled a lawsuit filed by approximately 600 survivors, which resulted in a settlement of $13.5 million, or roughly $13,000.00 per person after legal fees.

Arnold & Porter took a portion of the legal fees paid to them and had the community center constructed in the hollow at their expense.

In a 2007 interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Moore claimed that he had nothing to do with the state's lawsuit against the Pittston Coal Company.

In Moore's words, he was blamed by unfair newspaper reports for the inequitable settlement because his signature appeared on its final documents.

[22] In 1976 Moore was legally barred from seeking a third term and declined to challenge incumbent Robert C. Byrd for a seat in the United States Senate.

Instead, he began a two-year campaign for the state's other Senate seat, which was expected to be vacated by the aging Jennings Randolph in 1978.

He defeated State House Speaker Clyde See to become the only West Virginia governor to be elected to three terms in office.

Moore pleaded guilty to an indictment that said he accepted illegal payments from lobbyists during his 1984 and 1988 election campaigns, which he failed to report on his Federal income tax returns for 1984 and 1985.

Furthermore, he also plead guilty to extorting more than $573,000 from Maben Energy Corporation, a coal company based in the town of Beckley, and obstructed the investigation of this activity.

Moore had helped Maben receive a refund of $2 million from the state's Black Lung Fund, an aid program for miners with the disease, in exchange for roughly 25% of this sum.

His daughter Shelley Moore Capito is the current junior United States senator from West Virginia.

"You'll run into Arch Moore stories for the rest of your life, and nine and a half out of ten will be positive," he told West Virginia Public Broadcasting in 2007.