ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A federal judge in Alaska who resigned after a damning investigation He discovered that he had engaged in inappropriate behavior with staff and attorneys. Attorneys had failed to report conflicts of interest with defense attorneys in 23 criminal cases he had handled, prosecutors said.
Alaska’s top federal defender, Jamie McGrady, said her office will conduct its own investigation following the resignation this month of U.S. District Judge Joshua Kindred, the Anchorage Daily News reported on Wednesday.
Kindred’s resignation came at the request of the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit Court, which also referred the case to the Judicial Conference of the United States to consider impeaching Kindred.
Kindred, 46, had an inappropriate sexual relationship with one of his clerks, who later became an assistant U.S. attorney in Alaska, the report found. He received nude photos from another assistant U.S. attorney and exchanged suggestive text messages with a private attorney, both of whom had cases for Kindred, investigators said.
The report also found that the judge created a hostile work environment for his clerks, often discussing his sex life with them.
Kindred, who took the bench in early 2020 after being appointed by former President Donald Trump, repeatedly lied to investigators and only admitted the truth when presenting evidence during an interview with members of the Judicial Council, the report found. His resignation left only one full-time federal judge in Alaska.
U.S. Attorney Bryan Wilson told McGrady in an email obtained by the Anchorage newspaper on Friday that his office had investigated matters to identify potential conflicts of interest arising from the findings of the Judicial Council report.
The code of conduct for American judges requires them to recuse themselves from a case if their impartiality could reasonably be questioned.
Wilson identified 23 cases with apparent conflicts that arose from Kindred’s interactions with federal prosecutors, including gun theft, drug distribution and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Kindred recused himself from some of them after the criminal investigation began in 2022, and other cases have been closed.
The Alaska Attorney General’s Office failed to timely disclose the conflicts of interest, allowed staffers with known conflicts of interest to continue working on the ongoing cases and promoted one of the attorneys involved, McGrady said, calling for a broader investigation into other potentially involved cases.
Her office, which provides legal assistance to indigent defendants accused of federal crimes in Alaska, will request more information about the “timing, nature and extent of these various conflicts of interest that may have affected the outcomes of our clients’ cases,” she said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alaska did not respond to questions from the Anchorage Daily News about McGrady’s allegations.
Instead, spokesman Reagan Zimmerman issued a statement saying the office has a duty to disclose or avoid potential conflicts of interest.
“We are continuing our review to ensure that these obligations are met,” the statement said. “As we have indicated, we intend our review to be ongoing and comprehensive, and we will supplement the disclosures as necessary.”