Retired U.S. District Judge James A. Redden, who presided over the Northwest’s biggest salmon lawsuit for nearly a decade and served as a former Oregon state representative, state treasurer and attorney general, died Tuesday night at the age of 91.
He died at an adult foster care home, where he was being treated for congestive heart failure, according to a story in the Portland Tribune, which employs his son.
One of his biggest legacies was the fight he waged to force the government to recover wild fish. He rejected three federal recovery plans and pushed government agencies charged with protecting threatened and endangered salmon to spill more water over dams rather than through fish-killing turbines. He pushed the government to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on technical fixes to dams and commit to habitat work across hundreds of miles of rivers and streams in the Columbia basin.
“Jim was a superb judge — and a superb person,’’ U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon said, in an email to other judges announcing Redden’s passing. “He also had such a great reputation as Oregon Attorney General. Jim was special and will be missed.’’
Redden was born in Springfield, Mass., and attended Boston College and Boston College Law School. He moved to Oregon in 1955. He worked for a year as a title company clerk and a claims adjuster in Portland before moving to Medford where he built a law practice. In 1963, he won a Jackson County seat in the state House of Representatives. He was elected House minority leader in the 1967 session. He helped draft the bipartisan Oregon beach bill that guaranteed public beach access as a matter of zoning, according to the Oregon U.S. District Court’s Historical Society.
Redden was elected state treasurer in 1973. He made an unsuccessful run for governor in 1974, and two years later was elected attorney general. He was nominated to sit on the U.S. District Court by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and took the bench on Feb. 20, 1980. He assumed senior status on March 13, 1995 and then retired in March 2017.
The judge donated his personal correspondence, including hundreds of letters he sent and received, to the historical society. The records revealed his long-standing love of the Boston Red Sox and his humor.
In his judicial chambers, he prominently displayed a photo of himself photoshopped into a Red Sox uniform and huddle. Early in his judicial career, he also kept a large calendar in his chambers, noting the “Days Since Last Reversed.’’
His high school sweetheart and wife Joan Redden passed away in 2018. He is survived by his sister M’lou Thompson of Portland and his two sons, James A. Redden III, a Portland Tribune reporter, and William F. Redden.
-- Maxine Bernstein
Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian
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