Walter Hughes Newton (October 10, 1880 – August 10, 1941) was a United States Representative from Minnesota who also served in the Herbert Hoover administration as Secretary to the President.

The enormous Eighth Circuit had encompassed all the territory from the Mississippi (except Texas and part of Louisiana) almost to the states of the West Coast.

Congressman Newton's plan resolved multiple disputes among the American Bar Association, the courts, and both Houses.

Newton's solution was to divide the states along a North/South boundary, creating the Tenth Circuit as encompassing Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, thereby leaving a somewhat unified grouping of Eighth Circuit states sharing the Mississippi/Missouri river system, from Minnesota and the Dakotas to Arkansas.

He served in that capacity until March 3, 1933; regent of the Smithsonian Institution; appointed a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and served until 1934 when he resumed the practice of law in Minneapolis, Minnesota; also engaged as an author; unsuccessful candidate for election in 1936 to the 75th Congress; appointed Federal Referee in Bankruptcy in 1938 and served until his death in Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 10, 1941; interment in Lakewood Cemetery.