By: James Brooks, Alaska Beacon
The Alaska Bar Association has voted to recommend that former U.S. District Court Judge Joshua Kindred be disbarred in Alaska.
Kindred, appointed by President Donald Trump to serve as a federal judge here, resigned last year from the federal bench after investigators found that he had a “sexualized relationship” with a clerk who became a prosecutor and lied about it to a senior judge and investigators, and maintained a hostile workplace for law clerks.
Since that investigation, additional improprieties connected to the U.S. attorney’s office have come to light.
On Thursday, the bar association’s board of governors voted without dissent to recommend that Kindred be disbarred, forbidden from practicing law in the state. The bar association regulates attorneys across Alaska.
The board’s recommendation will go to the Alaska Supreme Court, which must make the final determination. No date has been set for when the court will consider the issue.
Kindred, whose law license is “inactive” according to the bar association’s database, did not participate in the investigation that preceded Thursday’s hearing, said Rebecca Patterson, president of the bar association’s board.
Louise Driscoll, assistant counsel for the bar association, said the association received “lots of calls” when the investigation into Kindred was revealed to the public.
Typically, she said, the association prefers to act when a grievance is filed by someone other than the association’s own counsel, but in this case, the association’s counsel filed the grievance itself in November.
The subsequent investigation, she said, was slowed by the fact that Kindred didn’t respond to requests for a response to the grievance. He no longer lived at his address on file. He had left the federal court. Former acquaintances didn’t know where he was.
Eventually, Driscoll said, a process server found Kindred sitting on the couch at his mother’s house.
“It was Mr. Kindred’s mother who answered the door and accepted service, but you could see Mr. Kindred on the sofa, so he was on notice,” she said.
Even then, Kindred didn’t respond, and in June, a committee recommended that Kindred be disbarred.
Driscoll said the committee considered it “very serious” that Kindred had lied to federal investigators about his activities.
“Lawyers are expected to be honest, and the members of the public have a reason to consider that they will be dealing with honest counsel,” she said.
Kindred’s actions, she added, have caused real harm — there are dozens of cases whose outcomes are now in doubt because Kindred failed to disclose conflicts of interest.
In addition, Kindred’s resignation has left only one active judge on Alaska’s district court bench.
“There’s been grievous harm,” Driscoll said of Kindred’s actions.
In a footnote to the disbarment recommendation, the committee said, “We enter our decision not with any joy. It is our collective hope Mr. Kindred can recover emotionally, financially and physically notwithstanding the hardships Mr. Kindred confronts.”
On Thursday, after Driscoll’s suggestion, the board of governors deleted that footnote.
Kindred, they concluded, should receive no more special courtesy than any other attorney facing the same accusations.
