William Doyle Ruckelshaus (born July 24, 1932) is an attorney and civil servant in the United States. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Ruckleshaus served as the first head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970, was subsequently acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and then Deputy Attorney General of the United States.
In a 1973 event known as the “Saturday Night Massacre", Ruckelshaus and his boss, Elliot Richardson, famously resigned their positions within the Justice Department rather than obey an order from President Richard Nixon to fire the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who was investigating official misconduct on the part of the president and his aides.
After leaving the Justice Department, Ruckelshaus returned to the private sector and the practice of law, serving for a time as the Senior Vice-President of Legal Affairs of Weyerhaeuser.
In 1983, with the EPA in crisis due to mass resignations over the mishandling of the Superfund project, President Ronald Reagan appointed Ruckelshaus to serve as interim director, a position he held through most of the following year.