Former 3rd Circuit judge, Trump's sister, dies at age 86
Then-Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, older sister of former President Donald Trump, sits in a balcony during Trump’s election night rally in New York in November 2016. Barry has died at age 86 at her home in New York. Photo by Julie Jacobson/The Associated Press.
Former Judge Maryanne Trump Barry of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Philadelphia has died at age 86.
Barry was former President Donald Trump’s older sister. She died at her home in New York and was found Monday, the New York Times reports.
Law.com, Law360 and Reuters also have coverage.
Barry retired from the 3rd Circuit in 2019, after the New York Times reported on alleged “dubious tax schemes” by the Trump family. She had taken inactive status in 2017 after Trump became the president.
Barry went to Hofstra University’s Maurice A. Deane School of Law after spending time out of the workforce to raise a son. She graduated in 1974 and went to work as an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey. She became chief of the appellate section in 1977 and first assistant in 1981.
She was nominated for a district judgeship by former President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and for the federal appeals court by former President Bill Clinton in 1999.
James Grimmelmann, a professor at Cornell Law School who clerked with Barry at the 3rd Circuit, told Law.com that Barry pursued law “as a calling, rather than to make a living.”
“She was really the member of her family who could go out and basically be independently successful,” Grimmelmann said.
Kevin Marino, who clerked for Barry when she was on the district court, told Law.com that Barry “was a person of uncommon intellect, unparalleled work ethic and unwavering principle—all of which made her a truly extraordinary judge.”
