Federal judge in Alaska resigns after investigation into sexual misconduct

A federal judge in Alaska who abruptly resigned last week subjected his staff to a hostile work environment and had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a law clerk, a US judicial panel said on Monday.

The Judicial Council of the 9th Circuit has publicly reprimanded and admonished U.S. District Judge Joshua Kindred, who was appointed by Republican former President Donald Trump and resigned from his lifetime post on Wednesday after taking office in 2020.

In a May 23 order released Monday, the council said it had requested his resignation and referred his case to the federal judiciary’s top policy-making body so that it could bring the matter to the attention of Congress, which could then consider a rare impeachment process for a federal judge.

“The judiciary has a duty to govern itself, and in doing so it must demand the highest standards of integrity and impartiality from its federal judges,” said Mary Murguia, chief judge of the U.S. District Court, in a statement.

Kindred, 46, did not respond to requests for comment. He told the council his “great sin here was the fact that during this time I treated my law clerks as friends and not as employees,” the nine-member panel’s 30-page order said.

The order states that an investigation found that Kindred created a hostile work environment for his employees by frequently using inappropriate language and talking to them about his sex life, their relationships and his “derogatory” views about colleagues and public figures.

An investigative committee found that Kindred had an “unusually close relationship” with one of the employees and that a week after she started her job at the prosecutor’s office, Kindred invited her for a drink, kissed her and grabbed her buttocks.

Days later, the court clerk said the judge invited her to his apartment where he was staying, asked her to lie on the bed with him and performed oral sex on her, the committee found.

The Justice Council said Kindred later lied to the investigative committee by denying having had a sexual relationship with the employee.