Clarence Addison Brimmer, Jr.

Clarence Addison Brimmer, Jr., known as Bud Brimmer (July 11, 1922 – October 23, 2014), was from 1975 until his death in 2014 a judge of the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming.

Biography

Brimmer and his two siblings were born in Rawlins in Carbon County in southern Wyoming, to the attorney Clarence A. Brimmer, Sr., and the former Geraldine Zingsheim. Brimmer received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at which he was the editor of the university's The Michigan Daily. In 1944 Brimmer joined the United States Army Air Forces, in which he attained the rank of sergeant and served until 1946. He received a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1947 and to Rawlins to join his father's law firm, Brimmer & Brimmer, through which he gained experience as a trial attorney. He was in private practice in Rawlins from 1947 to 1971. He was the state chairman of the Wyoming Republican Party from 1967 to 1971, when he was appointed by Governor Stanley K. Hathaway as the state attorney general, a post he filled until 1974.^[1]

Brimmer was a Republican candidate in the 1974 Wyoming gubernatorial primary. He polled nearly a quarter of the Republican vote, a strong fourth-place finish, but he lost the nomination to trucking executive Dick Jones of Cody, who in turn was defeated in the general election by a Democrat, Edgar Herschler. Another candidate in the gubernatorial primary was Malcolm Wallop of Sheridan, who in 1976 won one of the United States Senate seats from Wyoming.^[2]

Brimmer was in private practice in Rawlins once again in 1974, while he also ran for governor, and was briefly the United States Attorney for the District of Wyoming in 1975. On July 23, 1975 United States President Gerald R. Ford, Jr. nominated Brimmer to a seat on the Wyoming District Court vacated by Ewing Thomas Kerr. Brimmer was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 15, 1975 and received his commission of office the following day. He served as chief judge from 1986 to 1992 and assumed senior status on September 27, 2006, at which time Nancy Freudenthal, wife of Democrat former Governor Dave Freudenthal assumed the seat. He retired from the bench in June 2013.^[3]

In 2008 Brimmer ordered a new trial for James Harlow, a Wyoming State Penitentiary inmate who had been on death row after conviction of murdering a prison officer in 1997. Brimmer said that Harlow had been denied a fair trial in the state court because his public defender had been made to fear he would be dismissed for representing Harlow and for seeking more state revenues for the public defenders office.^[3]

Brimmer's son Philip became a federal judge in Colorado in 2008, an appointee of President George W. Bush.^[4] Clarence died at the age of 91 in Boulder, Colorado.^[1]

References

Sources

• Clarence Addison Brimmer, Jr. at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• Judges of the United States