George H. Goodrich

In 2015, Goodrich died in Charlottesville at the age of ninety years. His memorial service was held at the Meadows Presbyterian Church. He was buried at Monticello Memorial Gardens.

In 1986, Goodrich was named acting chief judge of the Superior Court, following the death of Judge H. Carl Moultrie. He also was on the faculty of the American Institute of Banking and the American University School of Business Administration. Goodrich retired from the bench in 2005.

On February 8, 1983, Goodrich ordered Howard University to temporarily reinstate Janice McKnight, the student editor of The Hilltop newspaper that had covered sex discrimination at the college because the university had failed to follow its policy that gives students a right to a hearing before expulsion. The day before expelling McKnight, the university had dismissed the employee who had filled the sex discrimination complaint. The judge found that it was "a mighty strange coincidence" that McKnight was expelled after ignoring the university president's request to stop newspaper coverage of the topic. The college maintained that McKnight "misrepresented her academic background on her admissions application in 1979." Goodrich noted that, even if true, Howard's position was "inflexible" and also "questioned the propriety of expelling McKnight for the admissions infraction after she had completed three years at the school." In addition to ordering that the university reinstate McKnight as a student and as the editor of The Hilltop, he also ordered Howard University to "cease and desist from interfering with her exercise of free press rights guaranteed by the…United States Constitution."

Goodrich received a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1977.

On February 25, 1977, Goodrich upheld Washington, D.C.'s gun law that limited the number of guns citizens could own and required annual gun registrations. The law also required handgun owners to unload and disassemble weapons in the house. Another component of the law which made it the strictest in the United States, was that no handguns could be sold or brought into in the District. The case was filed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) against the District of Columbia, with the latter being supported by the National Council to Control Handguns. In his finding, Goodrich upheld the city's ordinances as "in the public interest and a valid act."

On August 12, 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed Goodrich to a ten-year term as an associate justice of the District of Columbia Court. He later to become a justice with the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, serving there for 36 years. He worked in all branches of the Superior Court—civil, criminal, and family. He was the administrative head of the family division and his peers elective him a representative to the Joint Committee on Judicial Administration. The Joint Committee decides policy matters for the D.C. Court of Appeals and the Superior Court.

After the war, he attended Williams College and received a B.A. in 1949. There, he was a member of the Fraternity of Delta Psi (St. Anthony Hall). He enrolled in the University of Virginia School of Law in the fall of 1949, and graduated in 1952. While there, he was senior editor of the Law Weekly.

In 1949, Goodrich married Nancy Ann Needham of Washington, D.C., his high school sweetheart. She was a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and was working for Time magazine in New York City. He father was Delos J. Needham, general counsel of the American Bankers Association.

He attended St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1943. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy as a navy corpsman and operative room technician on the hospital ship, USS Sanctuary (AH-17), in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.

Goodrich was born in Charleston, West Virginia. His parents were Beulah (née Lenfast) and Edgar Jennings Goodrich, an attorney "regarded as the nation's foremost authority on tax law…." In 1931, his father was appointed judge of the U.S. Board of Tax Appeals, and the family moved to Washington D.C. They spent their summers at their cottage, Sandy Bottoms, at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

George Herbert Goodrich (June 19, 1925 – September 22, 2015) was an American judge and attorney. He served as a judge with the Superior Court of the District of Columbia for 36 years.