George William Miller was born in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, on March 9, 1925. He earned a B.S. in Marine Engineering from the Coast Guard Academy in 1945 and served as a U.S. Coast Guard officer from 1945 to 1949.

Miller earned a law degree from the University of California School of Law at Berkeley in 1952 and worked with the law firm of Cravath, Swaine and Moore in New York. He was chairman of the industry advisory council of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (1963-1965). He also was active in industry, becoming vice president (1957-1960), president (1960-1968), CEO (1968-1974), and later CEO and chairman (1974-1978) of Textron, Inc.

Miller served as chairman of the U.S. Industrial Payroll Savings Bond Committee (1977) and cochairman of both the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Trade and Economic Council and the Polish-U.S. Economic Council. He was chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1978 to 1979, becoming Carter's secretary of the treasury in 1979 and remaining in that post until the beginning of the Reagan administration.