U.S. District Judge John McBryde, 91, who earned a reputation as a jurist who ruled with an iron fist in his courtroom, died on Christmas Day.
McBryde’s death was announced by the U.S. District Court Northern District of Texas.
McBryde was appointed to a lifetime seat on the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, assuming senior status in 2018. President Donald Trump appointed his successor, Judge Mark Pittman in 2019.
Judge John McBryde
Since the seat’s establishment in 1922, five judges have administered the Fort Worth federal courtroom, all of them appointed by Republican presidents.
William H. Atwell was appointed by President Warren Harding in 1923. Joe Ewing Estes was named by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1955, and Eldon Mahon was tapped by President Richard Nixon in 1972 and served until McBryde’s appointment.
McBryde, a graduate of TCU and Texas law school, began his legal career in 1956 with Cantey Hanger, then known as Hanger, Johnson, Scarborough & Gooch. He was an associate there from 1956-62 and partner from 1962-69.
In 1969, he became a named partner in McBryde & Bennett (and predecessor firms, commencing as Buck, McBryde, Bogle & Thompson), where he remained until his appointment to the bench in 1990.
McBryde was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and raised in Fort Worth.
McBryde’s temperament in the courtroom caused controversy.
In 1997, a federal judicial panel reprimanded McBryde, notoriously strict in the courtroom, and banned him from hearing new cases for a year. Dozens of lawyers and fellow judges and court staff members testified against McBryde in closed-door hearings as part of an investigation into his courtroom conduct, which his critics alleged was abusive and humiliating to attorneys.
A profile written by the Dallas Morning News noted words writers have used to describe McBryde: volcanic, impatient, tyrant, nasty, hanging judge, and fire-breathing.
At the same time, another attorney said: “Lawyers have been afraid of him since the very beginning.”
A federal judicial council at one point issued a scathing rebuke, calling his conduct in two cases “an impediment to the effective administration of justice.”
Said one lawyer, who called for his impeachment: “He deprives people of their right to a jury trial. He’s extremely sarcastic. He’s very rude and he gets a big kick out of it.”
Upon his return, he promptly fined a lawyer $300 for being 12 minutes late for a hearing.
The attorney explained that his secretary mistakenly wrote down the wrong courtroom in his office calendar.
“The court did not find that to be a satisfactory excuse under the circumstances,” McBryde’s order read. The attorney’s “excuse was so implausible that the court could not accept it as truthful.”
He also gained a reputation for a fast-moving docket. The press release announcing his passing noted that he carried "a weighted caseload higher than the national average throughout his tenure as an active judge."
In 1997, he ordered representatives of the cities of Fort Worth and Dallas to meet face-to-face in an effort to settle the legal dispute over expansion of interstate flights at Love Field. Fort Worth was suing to block expansion of the flights.
“Judge McBryde always has the parties meet face-to-face with the authority to settle,” said Jim Lane, then a Fort Worth City Councilman, at the time. “That is one of the procedures that has made Judge McBryde’s docket move as fast as it does. He has a way of getting people together and they realize that they are certainly capable of settling their own differences.”
McBryde is survived by his wife of 68 years, Betty, and three children.