Desegregation eventually closed the original Maggie L. Walker High School as a city school, and the building stood vacant. Meanwhile, in 1991, Virginia's Governor's Schools program - one of the most respected gifted-education systems in the country - opened the Governor's School for Government and International Studies, sharing space at Richmond's Thomas Jefferson High School. The plan was for Thomas Jefferson to phase out by 1995, leaving the building to the new Governor's School. Parents, students, alumni, and city politicians at TJHS organized to prevent the closure, Richmond Public Schools reversed course, and in 1992 Thomas Jefferson resumed accepting freshmen. The Governor's School needed somewhere else to go. After several years of false starts, it landed on the abandoned Maggie L. Walker High School building. Several million dollars of renovations followed. In fall 2001, the new tenants took occupancy and adopted the name Maggie L. Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies - keeping the historic identity of the building they had inherited.

What makes MLWGS work is that it isn't really a Richmond school - it's a regional one. Fourteen jurisdictions across central Virginia send students: the counties of Chesterfield, Henrico, Hanover, Goochland, Powhatan, Prince George, Charles City, King and Queen, New Kent, and Dinwiddie; the cities of Richmond, Petersburg, Hopewell, and Colonial Heights. Each locality decides for itself how many students it will fund and bus to the school. The Regional School Board includes one member from each participating jurisdiction. Applicants undergo a rigorous process - tests, essays, recommendations, grades - and roughly 16 to 17 percent get in, out of about 1,200 applicants per year. Freshman classes typically run around 190 students. The 2017-18 enrollment was 751. Newsweek has named the school one of the most elite public high schools in America every year since 2006; the Daily Beast ranked it 10th best in the country in 2014 and 7th in the South.

The school's reputation rests on its academics - dual enrollment with Virginia Commonwealth University lets students earn college credit and access the VCU library system - but the institution also takes athletics seriously. The mascot is the Green Dragon, kept from the original Maggie L. Walker High School. MLWGS fields teams in basketball, dance, volleyball, wrestling, soccer, tennis, golf, swimming, field hockey, cross-country, indoor and outdoor track, baseball, and softball - everything but football. The boys' cross country team won the AAA state championship in 2001. The 2019 girls' cross country team won the AAA state title. The 2017 baseball team won the AA state crown, beating Goochland 3-1. The same year, boys' soccer won the school's first VHSL 2A state championship, finishing on a nine-game winning streak. The girls' and boys' swim teams have won VHSL championships. Community service is mandatory: the 2023 graduating class collectively logged 40,432.75 service hours.

The current school's alumni list reflects what an academically intense, regionally drawn public school produces when it has been running for a generation. Emmanuel Pratt, class of 1995, became an urban designer and a 2019 MacArthur Fellow. Sara Schaefer, class of 1996, became an Emmy-winning comedy writer. Colin Van Ostern, class of 1996, became a New Hampshire politician. Jenny Han, class of 1998, became a New York Times bestselling author whose To All the Boys I've Loved Before novels were adapted into films. Jamey Stegmaier, class of 1999, founded Stonemaier Games and designed the board game Scythe. Esther Erb, class of 2004, became a competitive long-distance runner. Marguerite Bennett, class of 2006, became a comic book writer. Cheta Emba, class of 2011, became a rugby union player. Lucy Dacus, class of 2013, became a Grammy-winning indie musician. And inscribed in the building's older identity: Arthur Ashe, Henry Marsh, Willie Lanier, Bob Dandridge. Two schools, one building. Both belonged to Maggie Walker.