Judge's Affair With Bailiff Ended in Suicide Attempt

Local Associate/Judge's Affair With Bailiff Ended in Suicide Attempt When He Broke It Off
The New Jersey Law Journal by Mary Pat Gallagher - February 6, 2009

Jersey City, N.J., Municipal Court Judge Wilson Campbell has been charged in an ethics complaint with having had an affair with a court worker, who apparently attempted suicide when it ended. In a complaint made public on Thursday, the New Jersey Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct says Campbell, a judge since 2007, had an "intimate relationship" with Ann Kirolos, a bailiff assigned to his courtroom, from April to June last year. The affair came to light after Kirolos took a drug overdose on June 26 and, when asked why, said she was depressed over the break-up, according to the complaint. On June 30, Campbell admitted to the relationship at a meeting with Hudson County Assignment Judge Maurice Gallipoli, trial court administrator, Joseph Davis and Jersey City Municipal Court Chief Judge Nesle Rodriguez, the complaint says. Kirolos was reassigned to another courtroom and placed on different hours so that she would no longer be working at the same time as Campbell.

Though Campbell was not Kirolos' supervisor, he exercised supervisory control over her within his courtroom and thus engaged in an intimate relationship with a subordinate. That was a breach of Canons 1 and 2a, which require judges to observe high standards of conduct and to act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the judiciary, and it was also conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice, in violation of Rule 2:15-8(a)(6), the complaint says. Campbell declines comment, referring questions to his lawyer, Brian Neary of Hackensack, N.J., who could not be reached. In addition to his part-time judgeship, Campbell is an associate with Sedgwick Detert Moran & Arnold in Newark, representing corporations in commercial, employment, product liability and personal injury litigation.

Campbell, 38, is a 1999 graduate of the Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge and holds an LL.M. in Trial Advocacy from Temple University's Temple University's James E. Beasley School of Law. He was an assistant counsel in the Department of the Navy's Office of the General Counsel from 1999 to 2002; a part-time assistant staff judge advocate of the U.S. Air Force Reserves from 2002 to 2006; and an assistant U. S. Virgin Islands attorney general chief of its White Collar Division from 2004 to 2006. He was one of several replacements for Jersey City judges accused of improperly dismissing traffic and parking tickets for friends and relatives. They included former Chief Judge Wanda Molina, indicted last July for ticket fixing. The disciplinary case is In the Matter of Wilson J. Campbell, Judge of the Municipal Court, ACJC 2008-17.