The ship was laid down on 19 August 1972 by the Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company as a Destroyer Leader, Guided Missile, Nuclear, DLGN-38.

[1] During the first six months of her commissioned service, Virginia ranged the eastern seaboard of the United States and cruised in the West Indies several times conducting myriad of post-commissioning tests and shakedown training.

On 28 January, however, she departed Norfolk to return to the area along the Florida coast and in the West Indies for a series of special tests conducted under the auspices of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.

During that voyage, she made a port visit at Mobile, Alabama, and conducted naval gunfire support training at Vieques Island near Puerto Rico.

During her third Mediterranean deployment in 1983, she patrolled off Beirut and fired nearly 300 five-inch rounds into Lebanon, many in defense of the strategic mountain town of Suk El Gharb.

In 1984, she entered Norfolk Naval Shipyard for her single major overhaul and was converted to the Navy's first strike cruiser with the addition of the Phalanx CIWS, Tomahawk missile and the SM-2 extension of her surface to air capability.

[citation needed] She was decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 29 November 1994, Virginia entered the Navy's Nuclear-Powered Surface Ship and Submarine Recycling Program on 31 March 1999.