Richard H. Poff, a former Republican congressman from Virginia who surprised official Washington in 1971 by withdrawing from consideration for a seat on the Supreme Court rather than submit to the harsh scrutiny he feared his anti-civil-rights voting record would arouse, died Tuesday in Tullahoma, Tenn. He was 87.

His death, at a nursing home, was confirmed by his family.

Mr. Poff was a decorated World War II bomber pilot and a respected lawyer who rode Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential coattails in 1952 to become one of the few Southern Republicans in Congress since Reconstruction.

He was widely viewed as President Richard M. Nixon’s first choice to fill the so-called Southern seat on the bench when Justice Hugo Black died in September 1971. As ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Poff was the point man Nixon chose to translate his law-and-order agenda into legislation.

He had waged what The New York Times described at the time as a “low-key but persistent personal campaign” for a Supreme Court nomination since Nixon was elected in 1968. Mr. Poff was said to have told friends that he would rather be a member of the Supreme Court than president of the United States.