Joseph Blakeney Brown Jr. (born July 5, 1947), known as Judge Joe Brown, is a former American lawyer and television personality. He is a former Shelby County, Tennessee Criminal Court judge and a former arbiter of the arbitration-based reality court show Judge Joe Brown. Early life and education Raised in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles, Brown graduated as valedictorian from Dorsey High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Juris Doctor from UCLA School of Law. While attending law school, Brown worked as a substitute teacher. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. Brown has spoken about how his upbringing shaped his philosophy. I grew up in one of the toughest neighborhoods in South Central Los Angeles. If you saw the movie Boyz n the Hood, that was the way I grew up. I watched my parents tough it out on a daily basis, and I saw that what really kept them going was making a difference to others. Career After graduating from law school, Brown moved to Memphis, Tennessee to work as an attorney for the Legal Services Corporation. Brown later worked for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. By 1978, Brown became the first African-American prosecutor in Memphis, and he later directed the Memphis public defender's office. He would later open his own law practice before being elected as a judge on the State Criminal Court of Shelby County, Tennessee in 1990. While on the bench he was known for his sometimes unusual sentences, such as, sentencing a child molester to confess to his church congregation and ordering a drug trafficker to apologize in a newspaper letter. Brown was thrust into the national spotlight while presiding over James Earl Ray's last appeal of his conviction for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Brown was removed from the reopened investigation of King's murder due to alleged bias. It was during this time that Brown caught the attention of the producers of Judge Judy. In March 2014, Brown won the Democratic primary for the position of Shelby County district attorney. He lost the general election to Republican incumbent Amy Weirich by 65% to 35%, after making comments about her sexuality.Brown asserted that Weirich’s "husband moved out and took the kids," and that "she needs to come out of the closet." Weirich responded: "It’s a sad day