G. D. Reilly, 88, Former Judge And Official in the Labor Dept. (original) (raw)
G. D. Reilly, 88, Former Judge And Official in the Labor Dept.
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- May 21, 1995
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Gerard D. Reilly, a former Labor Department official during the New Deal who later served as Chief Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, died on Thursday as he was leaving the court, where he had been a Senior Judge since his retirement in 1976. He was 88 and lived in Washington.
According to a colleague, Senior Judge John W. Kern, Judge Reilly apparently suffered a heart attack at the wheel of his car, which struck a wall of the court's underground parking garage. He was pronounced dead at George Washington University Hospital.
A native of Boston who joined the Labor Department under Secretary Francis Perkins in 1933 after receiving undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard, Judge Reilly held a succession of posts before serving as one of the three members of the National Labor Relations Board from 1941 to 1946.
In 1947, Judge Reilly helped the Senate Labor Committee draft the Taft-Hartley Act, the landmark labor legislation that among other things barred union-employer contracts that required all workers to be union members. He was in private practice in Washington from 1946 until 1970, when President Richard M. Nixon named him an Associate Judge on the newly organized Court of Appeals, which serves as the highest court in the District's municipal court system. He was named Chief Judge in 1972.
On the court, Judge Reilly was admired for his "highly literate and beautifully written opinions," Judge Kern said, attributing his refined writing style to his classical education at the Boston Latin School and Harvard.
Judge Reilly was a resident of Washington's Cleveland Park section, where he was a longtime member of the Cleveland Park Book Club, the city's oldest and most exclusive book club. He also was a former president of the Cosmos Club, known as a meeting place of Washington's intellectual elite.
He was the brother of the late Bishop Thomas F. Reilly, who while serving in the Dominican Republic became known for his defiance of the Trujillo dictatorship in the early 1960's.
Judge Reilly, whose first wife died in 1980, is survived by his wife, Dorothy; a son, Jack; a daughter, Margaret Ann Heffern, and four grandchildren.
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