Jack Tarpley Camp Jr.

Jack Tarpley Camp Jr. (born October 30, 1943) is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Born in Newnan, Georgia, Camp received a Bachelor of Arts degree from The Citadel in 1965, a Master of Arts in history from the University of Virginia in 1967, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1973.

Camp won a Ford Foundation fellowship to study history at the University of Virginia.

Camp grew up on a working farm in Moreland, Georgia a few miles from Newnan, that had been in his family more than a century.

He still owns a 175-acre farm in Coweta County.

Camp was in the United States Army from 1967 to 1970, and in the United States Army Reserve from 1970 to 1986.

He joined the Army as a lieutenant.

He arrived in South Vietnam in 1968, shortly after the Tet offensive, and was assigned to military intelligence.

He spent the first part of his tour in the interrogation section and the second part in visual reconnaissance that often involved patrolling the Ho Chi Minh trail (the major northsouth route for the North Vietnamese armies) from the air.

According to Camp, "It was an exciting tour", "I never would have volunteered for Vietnam. But it was the event of my generation," the judge said, and, as such, he has never regretted his service there.

Camp noted that television programs and movies contributed to the aura of lawyers.

"I really do believe more members of my generation went to law school because of 'To Kill a Mockingbird,'"—the movie based on Harper Lee's book starring Gregory Peck as the highly principled lawyer Atticus Finch, Camp said.

"It came out while I was in college."

He was in private practice in Birmingham, Alabama from 1973 to 1975, and in Newnan from 1975 to 1988.

Camp remembered winning a jury acquittal in Pike County of a client who had shot and killed someone.

While he was sitting at the counsel table after the verdict had been rendered, the widow of the dead man suddenly came down the courtroom aisle, pushed past the bar, waving a large butcher knife.

"She was coming after my client," Camp recalled.

"But I was between my client and her."

The assistant district attorney tackled her less than five feet from Camp.

He said he got a call a short time later from the local prosecutor telling him that, "if you don't mind," he intended to drop charges against the widow, adding, "This woman was just upset."

Noted the judge, "That wouldn't happen in federal court."

When Camp was nearing 45, United States District Judge Charles Allen Moye Jr.. announced he was taking senior status.

Camp, who had never been a judge nor active in local politics, was restless to try something new.

After he read of Moye's pending retirement, Camp said his law partners "talked me into" applying for the job.

At the time, one of his partners was John Stuckey, then the state chairman of the Republican Party.

"He vouched for my party credentials," the judge said.

"I had never been active in party politics."

Georgia's United States Senators, Sam Nunn and Wyche Fowler, both of whom Camp knew, also vouched for him.

On December 18, 1987, Camp was nominated by President Reagan to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia vacated by Moye.

Camp was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 19, 1988, and received his commission on April 20, 1988.

In 1995 Camp issued a temporary stay of execution for convicted killer Larry Lonchar two hours before he was to die.

Lonchar claimed he wanted to be executed but contended that he wanted to die by lethal injection, not in the electric chair, to preserve his organs for donation.

He served as Chief Judge from 2006 to 2008.

After Camp was nominated, Fowler introduced him to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

That fall, after a series of contentious hearings, the Senate rejected Reagan's United States Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, then a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

By the time Camp appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, it was near the end of Reagan's second term, and the Senate had failed to confirm 35 of his judicial nominees.

But with the support of both of Georgia's Democratic senators and United States Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, then the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Camp said his nomination was approved.

Thurmond backed Camp because he was a The Citadel graduate, the judge recalled, telling the Senate committee, "All you need to know about this next man is that he graduated from the finest military institution in the country."

Larry Lonchar:

A Republican, he was nominated by Ronald Reagan, and retired from the bench in November 2010 after pleading guilty to drug related charges, including a felony count for giving a stripper cocaine even though he knew she was a convicted felon.