Robert Walter Jones was a Cleveland, Ohio lawyer, politician, law professor, civil rights litigator and environmentalist. As an attorney, he was employed in public capacities in Northeastern Ohio as a Legal Aid Public Defender, United States Attorney, and City of Cleveland attorney. In response to the Cuyahoga River fire, as U.S. Attorney in 1970 he led the first Federal grand jury water pollution investigations and prosecutions setting into motion the recovery of the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie and the development of the Clean Water Act.