AUGUSTA, Maine — A portrait of the late U.S. District Judge Morton A. Brody was unveiled Thursday afternoon at the Capital Judicial Center, according to his friend and former colleague Superior Court Justice Donald Marden.
Brody died in March 2000 at the age of 66 while serving as a federal judge for a decade.
A portrait of Brody has hung in the third-floor courtroom of the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building in Bangor since six months after his death. Marden felt that because Brody spent much of his career working in Kennebec County, his picture should be displayed in the new Capital Judicial Center.
“He spent so much time trying cases in Kennebec County as an attorney and a judge, it felt right that his portrait should be here, too,” Marden said Thursday.
A large photograph of Brody, most likely taken when he was elevated from the Superior Court bench to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 1990, will hang in Courtroom 3, on the second floor of the building, where many jury trials are held.
The photo was taken by Tom Jones, Marden said.
“Mort was an excellent trial judge, which came from his intellect and from years of trying cases,” Marden said. “He had a great temperament as a judge and was a great friend to the entire bar.”
Marden described Brody as a “big, big man. Big of heart, big of courage, big of concern for his family and friends,” he said in 2000 at the portrait unveiling in federal court.
Brody was active in civic affairs in Waterville for many years and in 1981 was named the city’s Distinguished Citizen of the year. A playground was named in his honor in Waterville in 2001.
For all the accolades he heard during a career that stretched 42 years, beginning as an antitrust lawyer in Washington, D.C., in 1958 and ending with a presidential appointment to the federal bench, Brody kept his accomplishments in modest perspective, according to his admirers.
“I think the most important thing is not to take yourself too seriously,” Brody said at his induction to the federal bench in 1991. “Remember, judges are appointed, not anointed.”
A graduate of Bates College, Brody received his law degree from the University of Chicago in 1958. After a stint in private practice and several years as Waterville’s city solicitor, he began working up the judicial ladder, first as a Superior Court justice and eventually as an associate justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.
President George H. W. Bush nominated him to be a U.S. district judge in 1991.
After his death, Brody’s family established the Morton A. Brody Distinguished Judicial Service Award, which is awarded every two years. It was awarded in April to Tani Cantil-Sakauye, chief justice of California.