Richard Bland Lee (January 20, 1761 – March 12, 1827) was an American planter, jurist, and politician from Fairfax County, Virginia.

Though not directly involved in the Revolutionary war as his brother Henry Lee III was, Richard nevertheless took an active interest in the American cause.

Though only eighteen years of age, Richard Bland Lee, in a letter written later that month, rebuked his famous uncle, characterizing the effort as "abominable ... [at a] ... time of public danger when our expenses are already unsupportable.

[2] Phi Beta Kappa undertook to secure its papers against capture, and many of its members joined a hastily formed local militia company to offer at least some resistance to the expected invasion.

Loudoun County voters several times elected Richard Bland Lee as one of their two representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1784 to 1788, 1796.

After ratification, he opposed efforts by Patrick Henry and others to call a second constitutional convention to add a bill of rights and believed the new system should be given a chance to operate before wholesale alterations were made.

Ultimately, however, Madison was rejected by the Henry-led House of Delegates on the assumption that he would not push for addition of a bill of rights, a contention that Lee worked hard to counteract.

In general, those who were the strongest supporters of the constitution in the form adopted by the Constitutional Convention, including its provision for a strong executive with power tilted toward the federal government were identified as Federalists, and those who were less supportive of a strong federal government, and believed that a bill of rights should have been included with the document prior to ratification were called Anti-Federalists.

He narrowly fended off a challenge from his more famous relative Arthur Lee in 1792 and finally lost his seat to Richard Brent in the election of 1794.

[10] Following his removal from "Sully" to Washington, DC in 1815, Richard, along with John Peter Van Ness and Tench Ringgold, was appointed by longtime friend President James Madison as one of three Commissioners to superintend the reconstruction of the Federal buildings damaged by British troops in the attack on Washington, DC, on August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812.

"[12] With his power severely curtailed, Lee, despondent over his treatment, left his position and for a short time seriously considered moving his family to Kentucky.

In 1819 he was appointed by President Monroe as a judge of the Orphans' Court of the District of Columbia, a position that he held until his death on March 12, 1827.

[13] Upon his death in 1787, Henry Lee II bequeathed 3,000 acres (12 km2) of his Cub Run estates to be equally divided between his sons Richard Bland and Theodorick.

According to Gamble, "if he turned to a specific source, it was doubtless the Memoires of Maximilien de Bethune, Duke of Sully and France's Minister of Finance under Henry IV.

Determined to steer clear of the untenable practices characteristic of the tobacco monoculture which predominated in Virginia, Richard, like George Washington whom he idolized, applied modern methods of farming designed to diversify production and to halt depletion of the soil.

He planted clover to help replenish the soil and he "tried crop rotation and the application of nutrients, especially crushed limestone, to fields where productivity was decreasing.

He planted large vegetable gardens and in 1801 Richard built a dairy house constructed with red Seneca stone.

Richard Bland and Elizabeth Lee initially moved to a home in Alexandria, then to a country home called Strawberry Vale near Scott's Run [1] (current site of Tysons Corner), and finally to the historic Thomas Law House at Sixth and N Streets, Southwest in Washington, DC.