Judicial Panel Confirms Sexual Misconduct Findings Against Former Alaska Judge

A national judicial conduct committee has upheld a panel's findings that a now-former federal judge in Alaska committed misconduct by engaging in an inappropriate sexualised relationship with one of his law clerks and creating a hostile work environment for court employees.

The Judicial Conference's Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability on Thursday affirmed a decision by the 9th Circuit Judicial Council that prompted US District Judge Joshua Kindred to resign from the bench last month.

The five-member panel found that the council had conducted a "thorough investigation," afforded Kindred all the due process and had ordered "appropriate" remedial measures in response to the "seriousness of the misconduct."

Those measures involved reprimanding Kindred and asking for his voluntary resignation. The council had also referred the case to the federal judiciary's top policymaking body, the Judicial Conference, to consider recommending Kindred's impeachment in Congress.

The panel called the 9th Circuit's decision to make an impeachment referral appropriate, but did not address whether the Judicial Conference should ultimately recommend Kindred's impeachment.

That question remains before the full Judicial Conference. If Kindred were impeached and convicted in a US Senate trial, he could be barred from holding any federal office in the future.

Kindred, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, had served only four years on the bench when he resigned in a sexual misconduct scandal that has raised questions about cases he oversaw and prompted calls by some lawmakers for greater workplace protections for judicial employees.

The 9th Circuit's investigation found that Kindred created a hostile work environment for his clerks by using crude language and discussing with them his sex life, their relationships and his "disparaging" views of colleagues and public figures.

Investigators found he also fostered an inappropriately sexualised relationship with a law clerk who he then had two sexual encounters with in October 2022 after she took a new job in the US Attorney's Office.

That ex-clerk has filed a complaint with the US Office of Special Counsel alleging the office's leaders retaliated against her after she informed superiors about Kindred's conduct.

The 9th Circuit inquiry also identified potential conflicts of interest that Kindred had with other lawyers, including with a senior prosecutor who had a "flirtatious rapport" with the judge and had sent him nude photographs.

Such conflicts, if not known to the parties, could be grounds for defense lawyers to challenge convictions or sentences imposed while cases were before Kindred. Prosecutors have identified dozens of cases in which such conflicts may have existed.

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