A Rush to Judgment

The Ascending Star Holder feels stung. The day he testified to the Judiciary Committee, his usual confident ease was absent. The overhead lights were dim and the TV spots shone brightly on a lanky 50-year-old looking lonely behind a microphone. As senators bore in, he looked weary and pained. His eyelids blinked rapidly as he registered the toughest questions.

The tempest comes after 25 sometimes exhausting years as a judge and federal prosecutor, just as Holder was preparing to ease into a life of good money, good deeds and quiet time with his wife, Sharon Malone, and their three children, Maya, 7, Brooke, 5, and Eric, 3.

Malone and Holder met in 1989 at a fundraiser for Concerned Black Men. He describes Malone, a respected obstetrician and gynecologist, as a partner who "sacrificed a great deal" while he rode his ambitions and his opportunities. "In too many ways, she has at times been a single parent."

It was 1976, two years after Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon, when Holder arrived in Washington. He was born, raised and educated through law school in New York City, where his father had immigrated from Barbados. His mother was a homemaker who became secretary to the Episcopal parish priest, and his father was a real estate agent.

Holder never imagined that he would stay, but weekly visits back to New York became monthly ones, and now he heads north only once or twice a year. He spent 12 years in the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, prosecuting a Philadelphia judge who took a bribe, an organized crime figure who paid one, and a Florida insurance commissioner who accepted money from the industry he oversaw.

Holder wore the robes of a Superior Court judge for five years, but when Clinton entered office and the U.S. attorney's job opened up, he applied. "I liked being a judge, but I ultimately began to feel like I was a referee in a game where I still wanted to be a player."