Judd Stone Departs Texas Judicial Vetting Panel After Lawsuit

Former Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone is off a committee of prominent lawyers charged with screening candidates for federal judgeships following a lawsuit that accuses him of sexual harassment, according to two people familiar with his departure.

Stone stepped down from the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee on his own accord, a person familiar with his exit said. The move comes days after a staffer for Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) accused Stone in a federal lawsuit of berating women and making sexual comments about her in 2023.

The woman’s complaints led Stone to resign from his position as the state’s top appellate litigator rather than be terminated, the lawsuit said.

The departure from the committee is the second such change in the days since the complaint became public May 27, after the Federalist Society removed Stone from a schedule of events for a convention next month in Houston. Stone was set to do a keynote “fireside chat” with Texas Supreme Court Justice James Sullivan.

The roughly three-dozen lawyer judicial committee recently convened in Houston and Dallas to interview candidates eyeing to be named federal judges and US attorneys in Texas. After the interviews, the committee made recommendations to Texas Sens. John Cornyn (R) and Ted Cruz (R). It’s not scheduled to meet again.

Stone, one of the newest members, was appointed by Cruz, who previously employed him as chief counsel.

The Letter

Stone quit the judicial vetting panel with a resignation letter shared with Bloomberg Law Friday by a spokesperson for his firm.

“I do not want the recent false and scurrilous accusations against me to overshadow the committee, let alone reflect poorly on the Senators for trusting me,” he said.

“I hope that the Senators will consider me again for service when I am cleared of these allegations,” Stone added.

His firm, Stone Hilton, previously called the allegations in the lawsuit “a meritless extortion attempt.”

The firm also said Paxton’s first assistant, Brent Webster, has a “vendetta” against Stone and co-defendant Chris Hilton and “that the lawsuit is his creation and a complete fabrication.” Webster, who hasn’t returned a request for comment, wrote a letter to a staffer that the woman included in the lawsuit citing fear for himself and his family due to threatening comments Stone made about them.

Stone’s accuser, Jordan Eskew, an executive assistant in Paxton’s office, claims in the lawsuit that Stone berated her and made sexually inappropriate comments to her in the summer of 2023, when they were part of a team of office staffers who took leave to defend Paxton on impeachment charges in the Texas Senate.

Webster’s email also says he later learned that Stone previously was let go from Cruz’s office for complaints from women, but that he hadn’t corroborated that information. A spokesperson for Stone Hilton called that claim “completely false.”

The case is Eskew v. Stone Hilton PLLC, W.D. Tex., No. 1:25-cv-804.