En route to England, he met Mary Dickson, a recent Vassar College graduate who also was a Cambridge-bound Fulbright Scholar.

Admitted to the bar in that year, he began the practice of law in Cleveland, Ohio with the firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey.

[1] Admitted to partnership in Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in 1967, Nelson resigned in 1969 to accept appointment by President Richard Nixon as General Counsel of the Post Office Department.

[1] On September 9, 1985, President Ronald Reagan nominated Nelson to a new seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit created by 98 Stat.

He was a director of the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, based in Clinton, New York, which sponsors an annual lecture on constitutional law in his honor.