Vance was also a lecturer at the Cumberland School of Law, at Samford University from 1967 to 1969. He served for a number of years in the United States Army Reserve, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. On November 4, 1977, Vance was nominated by President Jimmy Carter to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit being vacated by Judge Walter Pettus Gewin. Vance was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 15, 1977, and received his commission the same day. The jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit at that time included six Southern states, including Alabama. In 1981, the territory of the Fifth Circuit was divided into two circuits, and on October 1, 1981, Vance was reassigned to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, on which he served until his death. On December 16, 1989, Vance was assassinated at his home in Mountain Brook, Alabama when he opened a package containing a mail bomb. Vance was killed instantly and his wife, Helen, was seriously injured. After an intensive investigation, the federal government charged Walter Leroy Moody Jr. with the murders of Judge Vance and of Robert E. Robinson, a black civil-rights attorney in Savannah, Georgia who had been killed in a separate explosion at his office. Moody was also charged with mailing bombs that were defused at the Eleventh Circuit's headquarters in Atlanta and at the Jacksonville office of the NAACP. Moody had been previously convicted in a 1972 of possession of a bomb that exploded in his house, injuring his first wife, Hazel; he intended to send the bomb to Atlanta car dealer Thomas N. Downing, the man who repossessed Moody's car. He served four years in federal prison at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. Prosecutors speculated that Moody's motive for killing Judge Vance was revenge against Vance's court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which had refused to expunge that conviction. Vance, however, had not been a member of the panel that considered Moody's earlier case. After John H. Wood, Jr., and Richard J. Daronco, Vance became the third federal judge in the 20th century to be assassinated because of his judicial service. After an order was entered directing the recusal of all circuit and district judges within the Eleventh Circuit, Moody's trial for murder and related crimes was presided over by Judge Edward J. Devitt of the District of Minnesota. After a successful prosecution by special prosecutors Louis Freeh and Howard Shapiro, Moody was convicted of all counts.