James P. Smith, who became the Middle District of Georgia's newest bankruptcy judge on Feb. 22, said he first got a lead on his current job at a Super Bowl party two years ago.
At that party, he ran into Robert F. Hershner Jr., a Middle District bankruptcy judge who told Smith he was planning to retire soon. When Hershner submitted his letter of resignation, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is responsible for vetting and appointing bankruptcy judges, announced an opening. Smith filed an application for the post and got the job last month.
Hershner and Smith share a legal legacy of sorts. The two had both practiced law with Macon lawyer Jerome L. Kaplan, although at different times. Hershner left Kaplan's firm in 1980 to go on the bankruptcy bench; Smith joined that firm, then known as Kaplan & Thomason, a year later, right after getting his law and M.B.A. degrees from the University of Georgia.
In 1985, the firm became the Macon office of Arnall Golden Gregory, where Smith said he spent 20 years handling business litigation and representing institutional creditors in bankruptcy matters. But in 2005, Arnall decided to close the office, and Smith, along with Kaplan and Ronald C. Thomason, joined former Arnall partner Ward Stone Jr., who'd left earlier to found his own firm, Stone & Baxter. At the smaller firm, Smith's practice became more focused on business debtors in Chapter 11 reorganizations.
Smith credits Kaplan with mentoring him and Hershner in their careers, calling his former colleague “the producer of bankruptcy judges.”
Smith's tenure as a bankruptcy judge really began on Monday, when he heard his first cases. Asked how things were going so far, he quipped, “Well, nobody's died yet.”