Are these walls near a skylight, load bearing?
OK, I've had remodelers tell my wife that those walls are not load bearing (they didn't go into the attic). 

Meanwhile, I've had a friend from church with framing experience look closely in the attic and say I definitely need to transfer the load being carried by these boards and walls and have at least one board to keep the roof from racking away from the rest of the house.

While drawing the diagram in my heavily edited question, I came to see how there must be some load on these few vertical boards, so I'm going that route recommended by my friend.

I'll cut a few boards to go from the ridge-line beam to the nearby load bearing hallway wall and closet walls, toenail them in, then begin removing the existing partitioning walls below.