Longtime U.S. District Court and Lehigh County Judge James Knoll Gardner died Wednesday at the age of 76.
Gardner, who this month took senior status as a U.S. District Court judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, had been an attorney and judge in Lehigh County and federal courts since 1972.
Colleagues said Gardner was fair and conscientious, driven by his desire to reach the correct decision, and that he often worked late into the night after others had left the courthouse.
“He was on the bench for 35 years and he never lost his desire to be a judge,” said U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry S. Perkin, who worked alongside Gardner in the Lehigh County district attorney’s office before joining him in the federal courthouse. “As a result, he was effective to the day he stopped doing it.”
Raised in Emmaus, Gardner graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in 1962. After earning his law degree from Harvard University in 1965, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving for three years in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, the legal arm of the Navy, and as an appellate judge on the Navy and Marine Corps Court of Military Review. He retired from the Navy Reserve as a captain in 1993.
Pennsylvania Superior Court Senior Judge William Platt grew up with Gardner and said he wanted to follow his father’s path through the legal profession. (Gardner’s father, Theodore R. Gardner, also served as a Lehigh County judge, and spent six decades in the legal profession.) When Platt was appointed district attorney in 1976, he chose Gardner as his first assistant.
“There was no question in my mind,” Platt said of his decision. “I knew how hard he worked. How dedicated he would be to me.”
Perkin, who appeared opposite Gardner as public defender, recalled Gardner as a zealous advocate for victims who was also a gentleman to his adversaries.
“It was always a pleasure even though we were on opposite sides,” Perkin said.
On the bench, he was known as a meticulous decision maker, Platt said.
“He did whatever he needed to get it right. He was a perfectionist in his own way,” he said.
Among the most closely watched cases of Gardner’s tenure on the federal court was a civil rights lawsuit against Bethlehem police. A jury in 2004 concluded officers used excessive force in a botched raid when they shot a suspected drug dealer and set fire to his home, awarding $7.4 million to the victim’s family.
In his private life, Gardner worked with a number of charity organizations, including the Allentown Symphony, which his parents helped to found. Executive Director Sheila Evans said Gardner, who served as the organization’s first vice president for many years, remained involved in the symphony’s events until this year
Board member Judith Harris said Gardner and his wife, Linda, were instrumental in establishing the symphony’s international competition for young string musicians.
“He always had good advice on what we could do to make the organization touch more lives in the Lehigh Valley and beyond,” Harris said.
Gardner had been in declining health with an undisclosed disease for a number of years, but remained active on the bench even as it became physically taxing for him, said retired U.S. District Judge Edward N. Cahn.
“He called me to tell me that he was afflicted with a serious disease but that he was going to gut it out,” Cahn said. “The disease did not affect his ability to reason and he wanted to continue.”
Gardner was a prosecutor in Lehigh County from 1972 to 1981 after practicing in Philadelphia for four years. During most of that time, he also maintained a general civil practice as a partner in the firm of Gardner, Gardner and Racines in Allentown.
For more than two decades, from 1981 to 2002, he served as a Lehigh County common pleas judge, taking the role of president judge during his last five years on the bench. He left the county court when he was nominated by President George W. Bush to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
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