Ray Lucian Garland (born May 20, 1934) is an American businessman and Republican politician who served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly representing Roanoke, and who later wrote a syndicated newspaper column.

Because he had four brothers and would not inherit the family farm near Buchanan, Walter Garland had moved to Roanoke where he lived at a boarding house operated by an aunt until his marriage, and took a soda fountain job at Clore's drugstore, to which he returned after some time as a clerk for the Norfolk and Western Railroad, and would later buy out his benefactor and acquire other small drug stores.

[2] Garland first won election to the Virginia House of Delegates (a part-time position) in 1968, as the Byrd Organization crumbled together with its Massive Resistance to school desegregation.

[3] Meanwhile, his unassuming (but customer-savvy) pharmacist elder brother Bob Garland, in addition to expanding the family's drug store business, also served on Roanoke's city council for 24 years, from 1962 until 1966 (including a term as vice-mayor despite being one of the few Republicans), and then after selling his interest in the remaining drug stores, from 1970 until 1990 (during which he recruited Noel C. Taylor, a local pastor and activist who became Roanoke's first African American mayor, and the first African American mayor of a major Virginia city).

[4][5][6][7] Despite his state senate defeat the previous year, in 1984, Ray Garland ran for Congress in Virginia's 6th district against Jim Olin, but lost.