In the early 1970s, Montgomery County Executive James P. Gleason appointed Wims to the Montgomery County Maryland Human Rights Commission, where he was its youngest member. In 1974, he became the first male Head Start teacher in Montgomery County. In 1976, Wims joined the congressional campaign of U.S. Representative Newton Steers, eventually becoming his chief legislative officer and the first African American from Montgomery County to work on Capitol Hill until 1978. Afterwards, he worked as a legislative assistant to U.S. Representative Melvin H. Evans. In 1980, he worked on the presidential campaign of former California governor Ronald Reagan, later working in the Reagan administration as a legislative assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture, and as the Special Assistant to the Director of Minority Affairs and Economic Development until 1989, when he left to start his own government consulting firm, Hammer and Nails Inc.
