The trail was steep, the ground thick with Rwandan mud. For twelve hours, Judy Crittenden trudged through it with her fellow Rotary Club members, refusing to slow down though she’d had knee surgery just weeks before. Nothing was going to stop her from seeing the gorillas.
That was Judy. Whether hiking through the jungle or launching programs that shaped Birmingham, she never backed down from what mattered—even when it cost her.
Her sense of justice showed early. As a college student at Judson College, she penned an editorial criticizing the school’s lack of diversity. When an influential trustee confronted her and pressured her to retract it, she refused, even at the risk of her scholarship. That courage followed her into the courtroom, where she became Alabama’s first female deputy district attorney in family court.
Once, during a heated divorce case, the judge cited Judy for contempt of court while she was standing up for her client. Instead of posting the usual $300 bail, Judy made her position clear. “She turned to me and said, ‘If he’s going to put me in jail, I’m going to go!’” recalls her husband, Philippe Lathrop.
Everyone—including the judge—was surprised when she didn’t post bail and walked to the Jefferson County Jail in her scrubs. “We had a big social function that night, a women’s fundraiser,” Philippe says. “I went on to the event. Why not? People kept asking, ‘Where’s Judy?’ I answered simply, ‘She’s been detained.’ No one knew!”
“Judy was tough,” says Susan Jackson, former executive director of the Rotary Club of Birmingham. “And she had to be. No one was going to step aside for her! But put a pair of binoculars in her hands, and you’d see how tender she was toward birds and nature.”
“She made emotional connections everywhere she went,” Susan adds. “From war survivors in the Czech Republic to young women in Birmingham boardrooms, Judy had a way of making people feel seen.”
Judy helped shape both the legal and civic landscape of Birmingham. She co-authored Alabama Family Law, the state’s domestic relations textbook, and founded The Crittenden Firm in 1984, now Crittenden Partners. She helped establish the Women Lawyers Section of the Birmingham Bar and chaired a $25 million capital campaign for The Nature Conservancy of Alabama.
To Mary Elliott, CEO of Warren Averett, Judy Crittenden was much more than a client. “She was a tremendous role model and a valuable source of inspiration for my own career. Her work ethic and professionalism have consistently inspired me and many others in our community to uphold the highest standards in our work and to strive for excellence in all we do.”
“Judy was a force—often ahead of her time,” shares Suzanne Durham, former executive director of the YWCA of Central Alabama. “I’m ever grateful for her vision and tenacity to start one of the state’s first shelters for family violence.”
“She was one of my closest mentors,” says Laura Montgomery Lee, managing partner at Crittenden Partners. “Not just in law, but in relationships, life, how to function as a human being.”
Judy had a gift for welcoming others, especially young lawyers. “When we’d go into court, if there was a face she didn’t recognize, she’d walk right over and introduce herself,” Laura says. “She didn’t have to. Everyone already knew who Judy was. But she wanted people to feel included.”
Despite her formidable reputation, Judy could surprise you. At the office, she once spotted a toy monkey in a potted tree, picked up the figurine, and began hopping around while singing the George of the Jungle theme song. “People warned me how tough she was before I came to work for her,” Laura says. “But not everyone got to see the playful side of her.”
As a proud wife to Philippe, a loyal mother to Kate, and an adoring grandmother to her namesake, Sullivan—“Sully”—Judy treasured her relationships with family. “She absolutely adored that little boy," Laura says. “When I visited her in her last months, she always wanted to show me pictures of Sully, and she lit up whenever she talked about him.”
Judy was brilliant, complicated, funny, relentless. She didn’t much care if she was liked, and that only made people admire her more. “Her reputation and her name on our door still bring people through it,” Laura says.
“She had that sassy outer shell, but underneath, she was the most warm, welcoming, sweet-spirited person,” says Birmingham attorney Alana Frederick. “The more I got to know her, the more I loved her.”
Judy Crittenden’s impact lives on in the courtroom, the conservation field, and the lives she touched. “At the time she started practicing law, being a female attorney wasn’t common,” Alana says. “But she had the brains, the grit, and the spunk to force her way in—and she paved the trail for the rest of us. Judy was unstoppable.”