Bid to Disbar Disgraced Alaska Judge Goes to Top State Court (1)

An Alaska disciplinary board recommended that former US District Judge Joshua Kindred should be disbarred, following findings last year that he was inappropriate with his law clerks and lied to judicial investigators.

The Alaska Bar Association’s Disciplinary Board voted at a Thursday meeting to adopt another panel’s recommendation on the penalty for Kindred.

The Alaska Supreme Court will now weigh whether Kindred should be disbarred.

Kindred didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Kindred resigned in July 2024, days before a US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit order laid out misconduct by the judge. Those findings, which included the judge having inappropriate contacts with federal prosecutors, have spurred defense lawyers to file motions challenging cases that were heard in Kindred’s court.

A 2020 appointee of President Donald Trump, Kindred is alleged to have violated three Alaska Rules of Professional Conduct. Two of the counts are tied to him having made false statements to judicial investigators during the Ninth Circuit’s investigation of his conduct.

He’s also alleged to have violated a rule that says lawyers can’t engage in “harassment or invidious discrimination during the lawyer’s professional relations,” over a finding he created a hostile workplace for his law clerks.

Alaska disciplinary counsel have argued that Kindred’s misconduct “supports disbarment from the practice of law for dishonesty and for the hostile work environment that took a personal and professional toll on multiple law clerks.”

Louise Driscoll, a bar disciplinary counsel, said at Thursday’s hearing that bar regulators in Alaska began getting “lots of calls” after the findings against Kindred were made public. She said that “people were outraged” and asked, “why aren’t you doing anything.”

She said they were taking steps. Driscoll said bar counsel filed a grievance on behalf of the bar on Nov. 1, and asked Kindred for a response. She said he didn’t answer them then or at any point throughout the proceeding.

Driscoll said a process server was sent to Kindred’s mother’s home, and that while his mother accepted the papers, the server could see the former judge sitting on the sofa nearby. “He was on notice,” Driscoll said.

Because Kindred didn’t respond to the charges, the allegations were deemed admitted under the Alaska bar rules. A disciplinary hearing committee in June said that, given that the claims were admitted, “disbarment is the appropriate sanction for Mr. Kindred’s misconduct.”

In a footnote to their ruling, the hearing committee said it’s “cognizant of the public embarrassment and presumptive personal pain and humiliation over the loss of the Federal Judgeship, the loss of a law license and the absence of income as a result of losing a law license.”

“The Committee wants Mr. Kindred to have a pathway to return to obtaining a law license, assuming the necessary efforts are undertaken to show by clear and convincing evidence Mr. Kindred is rehabilitated and not a threat to the public after the requisite 5 year duration of time following disbarment has passed,” the committee wrote. “We enter our decision not with any job. It is our collective hope Mr. Kindred can recover emotionally, financially and physically notwithstanding the hardships Mr. Kindred confronts.”

Driscoll said she wasn’t sure why the footnote was added. But she said the hearing committee consisted of members newer to the disciplinary process, and that recommending an attorney’s disbarment can be difficult.

Still, she said, “it seems to put Mr. Kindred in a category” that other lawyers facing disciplinary charges aren’t in.

The board on Thursday voted to strike that footnote, as they sent their recommendation to the Alaska Supreme Court.