[1] Lyon served numerous terms in the Senate and Assembly and authored the legislation creating the UCLA campus.

He was the eighth of nine children of James H. and Laura Emma (Simpson) Lyon, who had moved to California from Maine.

[3] He married Nancy Janney, daughter of a well known Utah mining engineer on September 21, 1912,[3] and the couple had three children.

Lyon cross-filed, running in both the Republican and Democratic primaries, and secured his re-election by defeating future Richard Nixon campaign manager Murray Chotiner in the Republican poll, and narrowly beating Robert A. Heinlein (who subsequently turned to writing science fiction) in the Democratic contest.

The Republicans won a majority in the Assembly in 1942, and Lyon was elected Speaker the following year, a post he held for two terms.

Lyon's political career ended in scandal when, in 1954, he was convicted in connection with a liquor license bribery scheme in Southern California.

[4] Lyon was paroled on November 5, 1956, after serving 18 months of a 5-year sentence at San Luis Obispo's Men's Colony.

In December 1961, Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown pardoned Lyon's fellow conspirator, former Assemblymember Delbert Morris.