Left inset: Joshua Kindred in a court photo (9th Circuit Annual Report). Main: The James M. Fitzgerald U.S. Courthouse and Federal Building in downtown Anchorage, Alaska, is pictured on Wednesday, July 10, 2024 (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File).
An Alaska attorney appointed by President Donald Trump to a lifetime federal judgeship in 2020, who quit his job rather than facing possible impeachment amid a sexual harassment and misconduct scandal, has been stripped of his law license and ordered to take ethics classes as a condition for possible reinstatement down the road.
The Alaska Supreme Court on Friday adopted the “findings and conclusions of the Disciplinary Board” and ordered Joshua Kindred disbarred from practicing law “effective immediately,” adding that he must earn “at least 15 credit hours of continuing legal education in the area of ethics, law office management, and management of law office accounts” before he can seek reinstatement.
As Law&Crime reported in July 2024, upon Kindred”s resignation, a panel of judges on the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit released its conclusions about a Special Committee’s investigation into and report on Kindred following allegations that he “created a hostile work environment for his law clerks by engaging in unwanted, offensive, and abusive conduct, and treating the law clerks in a demonstrably egregious and hostile manner.”
The “misconduct,” the panel said, included an “inappropriately sexualized relationship with one of his law clerks during her clerkship and shortly after her clerkship while she practiced as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Alaska.”
In addition, the panel concluded he “lied” about not having “two sexual encounters” with a law clerk, one in his chambers and another at an Airbnb.
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Texts were part of Kindred’s undoing.
“Didn’t imagine your exit interview would involve that much oral,” Kindred was quoted as saying, with the former clerk replying “*argument,” as in oral argument.
But under questioning about the texts, Kindred said “I’ve not seen [this law clerk] naked, so that doesn’t make any sense to me,” the report said.
The investigative body also found that Kindred “made inappropriate comments about sex, drinking, and drugs” in the workplace, telling law clerks “Who gives a f— about ethics, we need to get you paid,” joking about “punching multiple Supreme Court justices,” and talking about his divorce.
The Special Committee also made a finding that Kindred, while a judge, “failed to disclose potential conflicts of interests when he had inappropriate interaction and relationships with two attorneys who often appeared before him.”
When he was grilled about his behavior, a judicial misconduct report said, Kindred “admitted that he was overwhelmed with his job and would often discuss this with the law clerk,” whom he said was “often the only person I would interact with face to face” after the COVID-19 pandemic exploded.
Before Kindred’s confirmation to the bench, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, supported him as “well-qualified” and having “good judgment,” based on his educational history, his legal work in the public and private sector, the family he was raising, and the “good family” he married into.
