US judge resigns after ‘sexual relationship’ with clerk (2)

An Alaska federal judge who unexpectedly resigned last week engaged in an inappropriate sexual relationship with a former law clerk and lied about it to a federal investigative panel, the Ninth Circuit Judiciary Council said.

Joshua Kindred, a Trump appointee who has served on the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska since 2020, “engaged in a pattern of widespread and abusive misconduct that constituted sexual harassment and fostered a hostile work environment that impacted the personal and professional lives of numerous officers,” the board said in a 30-page order issued Monday.

“Judge Kindred’s conduct was not courteous, dignified, or respectful — the qualities we expect from a federal judge — and his interactions with paralegals were abusive, oppressive, and inappropriate,” the order says.

Kindred filed a two-sentence letter of resignation with the court on July 5, announcing his intention to resign. However, the letter did not provide a reason for his resignation.

In a statement Monday, the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit said it had “publicly admonished and reprimanded Judge Kindred for his conduct” and requested that he voluntarily resign. The Ninth Circuit Judicial Council also certified the case to the Judicial Conference of the United States for impeachment consideration.

“This was a serious and delicate case in every respect,” said Mary Murguia, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The board’s rare public order noted that Kindred had maintained what the board called an “extremely close relationship” with an unnamed trainee who later worked for the U.S. attorney’s office in Alaska.

The clerk testified that Kindred asked her out for drinks in October 2022, about a week after her internship ended. After they had their drinks, Kindred invited her to his office, where he “kissed her and grabbed her buttocks.” A second sexual encounter occurred a few nights later, during which, she recalled, “I remember thinking he was feeling really strong and I was trying to pry his arm off of me. . . . I just remember thinking I couldn’t do anything about it, that this was about to happen.”

According to the order, the judge and the clerk also exchanged 278 pages of text messages, mostly on non-work-related topics. In those messages, Kindred called the clerk “one of my best friends and favorite people in the world.”

The misconduct order also found he created a hostile work environment for other employees and used vulgar language in the workplace. The board said Kindred had “no filters about the topics he discussed with officials,” including his sex life, the romantic lives of officials and “the disparaging opinions of his colleagues.”

When officials raised concerns about the judge’s conduct with him, they were “belittled or ostracized, and in one case, the official left his position,” the order reads.

“The Council has no assurance that he will ever conduct himself in a manner befitting his office or in a manner that will promote public confidence in the administration of justice,” the regulation reads.

Kindred initially denied the meetings to the board investigating the case. But the board found that the witnesses it heard were credible and that the judge was dishonest. The judge’s dishonesty “impeded the judiciary from conducting an effective investigation,” the Ninth Circuit found.

When he later had the opportunity to submit a written response to the committee’s report, the judge found that he had “fallen out of line and crossed lines that he should not have crossed, particularly in relation to my general trend of treating staff as friends and allowing my personal and professional struggles to become topics of conversation.”

Kindred later admitted to the council that he had relied on his clerks in an “uncontrollable” way during a period of personal turmoil, including his divorce. Law officials also told the inquiry that the judge “drank frequently and excessively, including in his chambers at the end of the day.”

Power dynamics

The disclosures come as the judiciary grapples with issues of workplace misconduct, particularly in the way judges treat civil servants.

Clerks typically spend a year or two working with a handful of others in a federal judge’s office, an experience lawyers describe as unique, invaluable and often intense. There is little oversight of clerks beyond their own judges, and that relationship can help define a legal career in its early years, as young lawyers can rely on the bonds they built in the office to secure referrals and other career opportunities.

Supreme Court Justice John Roberts said in 2017 that he asked the federal judiciary to create a misconduct task force after the retirement of Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, who was accused of sexual misconduct. The judiciary has since adopted new measures, including the creation of the Office of Judicial Integrity, a resource for employees on the complaint process.

In 2020, Olivia Warren, a former law clerk to fellow Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who died in 2018, testified before a U.S. House of Representatives committee about harassment she experienced while working in his office. Other former law clerks have also testified about inappropriate experiences during their time in the federal judiciary.

Jaime Santos, a partner at Goodwin Procter who advocates for changes to how the judiciary handles misconduct, wrote in an email that she couldn’t imagine a recent law school graduate “starting what seems like a dream job, hoping to gain excellent work experience and a lifelong mentor, only to find herself instead facing the nightmare described in the report.”

She said that while the report was difficult to read, she was grateful it was not whitewashed “because it is important for the public to see what happens when the power dynamics in the judicial chamber are used for the worst purposes.”

“It is important that judicial trainees who have experienced abuse see that the Judicial Council takes these issues extremely seriously, so that they feel comfortable reporting or witnessing cases of judicial abuse,” Santos added.

Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge, noted that the decision against Kindred was unanimous and unusually comprehensive.

“In my opinion, while they strongly disapproved of the judge’s alleged conduct, they were at least as concerned about his repeated lack of candor,” Fogel said in an email. “And, as may have been true in a previous era, there was no discussion of remedies that would allow the judge to continue serving. Given the Board’s findings, I have no problem with that.”

‘Good and bad’

Kindred was born in North Carolina in 1977 and moved to Alaska when his father, who was in the Air Force, was transferred there, according to a 2021 profile on Federal Lawyer. After high school, he worked full-time at a hardware store before graduating from the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and then Willamette University College of Law.

Before joining the bench, Kindred clerked for the Office of the Regional Solicitor in Anchorage, the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, the Anchorage District Attorney’s Office and the law firm of Lane Powell, according to his Senate questionnaire. He received a rating of “qualified” from the American Bar Association.

Kindred told Federal Lawyer that one of the strengths of his career is his ability to be “very objective” and that he “has always seen things in terms of right and wrong.”

“Now that I get to sit here, I feel like those traits will serve me well in this role, despite how steep the learning curve is. I believe having that as a foundation helps me be well-suited for this position,” Kindred told the magazine.

His departure from the bench leaves two vacancies on the three-judge court. The Judicial Conference considers a vacancy an emergency if the court has only one active judge and is expected to have more.