Ex-Alaska Judge’s Lawyer Ties Have US Asking to Toss Conviction

Alaska federal prosecutors moved to throw out a criminal conviction in a case where ex-judge Joshua Kindred didn’t recuse himself—despite having received nude photographs from a prosecutor in the case.

Kindred’s relationship with the prosecutor, Karen Vandergaw of the Alaska US attorney’s office, “had become personal” before the disgraced former judge accepted the defendant’s guilty plea for assault over two years ago, the Justice Department said in a Tuesday filing.

The Justice Department also told the court it learned “from a hearsay source” that Kindred and Vandergaw had an ex parte conversation about the case, during which Kindred reportedly ...