Pioneering D.C. Judge Beat Racial Odds With Wisdom

Senior U.S. District Judge William B. Bryant, whose love for the law and the Constitution became hallmarks of his long career as a groundbreaking lawyer, the first black federal prosecutor and later the first black chief judge of Washington's federal court, died Sunday night at his home in Washington. He was 94 and frail, said his daughter, who gave no exact cause of death.

Bryant achieved a remarkable legacy, overcoming years of segregation in the legal profession with a steady focus on the facts and the law. To him, the law and the court system offered the best hope for people to be treated fairly. He held to his belief, grounded in his work as a lawyer during the racially torn 1950s and 1960s, that the court system could administer justice.

In one case early in his career as a lawyer, he won a landmark decision before the U.S. Supreme Court on defendants' rights, arguing that a person must be brought promptly before a judicial officer for a hearing of the charges. He also oversaw one of the longest-running cases in the court's history, involving overcrowded and inhumane conditions at the D.C. jail.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) said District residents admired Bryant as a Washingtonian who spent his life overcoming racial odds to represent residents with such excellence that the bar and the legal establishment itself had to admit him.

"In Judge Bryant's closed, segregated Washington, a black lawyer could not achieve what he did by the protests we are used to today," she said. "He was left on his own with only his excellent, disciplined mind, his understanding of the meaning of justice, his determination to succeed and his zeal for public service."

He was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on July 12, 1965, by President Lyndon B. Johnson. He served as chief judge from 1977 to 1981, and was believed to be the first black chief judge of any federal District Court.

He assumed senior status in 1982 and continued to hear cases until a few days before his death.

Thomas F. Hogan, the current chief judge of the District Court, called Bryant "the soul of the court." He "sought to achieve equal justice, always careful to preserve the dignity of those who appeared before him," Hogan said.

In a legal career that stretched nearly 60 years, Bryant handled numerous prominent cases as both a lawyer and a judge. As a defense attorney, he was considered one of the city's best and often was assigned to represent indigent defendants in important cases. One of these was in the 1950s. Andrew Roosevelt Mallory, 19, had confessed to rape after 7 1/2 hours of interrogation in a police station. After Mallory was convicted and sent to death row, Bryant pursued the case to the Supreme Court.

In 1957, the court overturned Mallory's conviction, ruling that any confession obtained by police during an unnecessary delay between arrest and arraignment could not be admitted as evidence.

On the bench, Bryant had a notable impact on the affairs of the District while overseeing the 25-year-old case brought on behalf of inmates of the D.C. jail, who said its conditions were overcrowded, inhumane and filthy.

At one point, so frustrated with officials' repeated delays in meeting deadlines for improvements and with their inaccurate assertions, Bryant took the unusual step of requiring them to make reports under oath.