John Jefferson Bray, (16 September 1912 – 26 June 1995) was an Australian lawyer, judge, academic, university administrator, Crown officer, and poet. From 1967 to 1978, he served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia. Early life and parents Bray was born in Adelaide, South Australia on 16 September 1912, the elder son of Harry Midwinter Bray (1879–1965), an Adelaide stockbroker, and his wife, Gertrude Eleanore Stow (members of whose family were Congregationalist missionaries in South Australia). His father's family had a history of involvement in South Australian politics and current affairs: Bray's grandfather was the Honourable Sir John Cox Bray, a former Premier of South Australia. On his mother's side, Bray claimed a collateral relationship to the third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson. Education Bray was educated at the state school at Sevenhill in the Clare Valley; at St Peter's College, Adelaide; and at the University of Adelaide, where he earned a B.A. in 1932, an LL.B.(Hons.) in 1933 and an LL.D. in 1937. He was granted an Honorary Doctorate in 1983. Legal career Bray trained as a lawyer and was admitted to the South Australian Bar in 1933, being appointed Queen's Counsel in 1957. He was acting lecturer in jurisprudence at the University of Adelaide for the years 1941, 1943, 1945 (due to his being medically unfit to serve in World War II owing to extremely poor eyesight), and in 1951. He served as a lecturer in Legal History at the University of Adelaide from 1957 to 1958, and then as a lecturer in Roman Law from 1959 until 1966. He was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia on 28 February 1967 and served until his retirement from the judiciary on 28 November 1978. Appointed by then Attorney-General of South Australia, Don Dunstan, he was appointed directly without having first served as a judge, which was an unusual occurrence. Bray was appointed Chancellor of the University of Adelaide in 1968, and also served as Deputy to the Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia from 1968 until retirement. Other activities Bray was an active member of the Libraries Board of South Australia between 1944 and 1989, the longest-serving Libraries Board member until that point. After he retired, the State Library of South Australia named its reference section as the Bray Reference Library, a name given to a suite of rooms when the library was redeveloped