Contact: Linda Whitsett Release 97-2 (202) 606-5398 April 15, 1997

 

 

 

JUDGE PAUL L. BRADY RETIRES FROM JOB SAFETY COMMISSION

Paul L. Brady, the first African-American appointed a Federal Administrative Law Judge, retires today after 31 years of service to the Federal government, Chairman Stuart E. Weisberg announced with regret.  Judge Brady has spent the last 25 years as an Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Judge, and in recent years presided as First Judge of the agency's Atlanta Regional Office.  In his honor, the agency's Atlanta Regional Office library and conference room have been designated the Brady Conference Room.

"Paul Brady's judicial temperament, knowledge, experience and productivity will be sorely missed by the Review Commission. Paul Brady is an outstanding jurist and a world class person," Chairman Weisberg said. While at the Review Commission, Judge Brady ruled on contested work place safety and health inspections initiated by the Secretary of Labor under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. As First Judge, he was also responsible for management of the Atlanta Regional Office.

A native of Flint, Michigan and veteran of the U.S. Navy, the judge has also been a private practice attorney, a hearing examiner for the Social Security Administration, and a trial attorney at the Federal Power Commission.  He attended the University of Michigan, the University of Kansas and earned his Juris Doctor at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas.  He has also studied at the Lawyer's Institute in Chicago, and, in Washington, D.C., at the Georgetown Law Center and the Center for Administrative Justice at George Washington University.

Judge Brady developed an early interest in the law by his personal involvement in the landmark desegregation case, Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka.   His aunt, Mrs. Lucinda Todd, initiated the case when she was unable to get music education for her daughter in the city's black schools. Judge Brady said he abandoned pursuing a career in psychology after  "being inspired by a small group of dedicated people" who met and developed the case in his aunt's home.

Judge Brady, a lifetime member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,  is the author of A Certain Blindness, a book chronicling his family's history as a prototype of other African-American families' quest for the promise of America. The book includes the story of his Uncle Bass Reeves, a former slave, who was appointed in 1875 as a U.S. Deputy Marshall and served under Isaac C. "Hanging Judge" Parker.  Bass Reeves was the first African-American Federal officer to serve on the western frontier.  On behalf of his uncle, Judge Brady recently accepted his posthumous induction as the first African-American in the Great Westerners Hall of the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.

Judge Brady has received numerous awards for community service, including national recognition for organizing government lawyers in a Volunteer Neighborhood Legal Services Program in Washington, D.C. Among other honors, he was an initial inductee in 1991 in the Alumni Hall of Fame of Flint Central High School.

The father of two children, Paul L. Brady, Jr., an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department, and Dr. Laura Kathleen Brady, of Bethesda, Maryland, he lives in Atlanta with his wife Xernona, a television executive.