QUITE AN ‘OTHER WOMAN’ BRILLIANT JUDGE’LL SURVIVE STEAMY DIVORCE SCANDAL
Federal Judge Kimba Wood has earned many fine titles: star student, loving mother, brilliant jurist and even for a few short days in 1966 Playboy bunny-in-training. But it was not until last week that she became known as “the other woman,” a label foisted upon her after a very private diary written by millionaire Frank Richardson 3d became a very public exhibit in his ongoing divorce battle with socialite Nancy Richardson. “When I first took her head and kissed her lips . . . . How she stiffened and gave slowly, but inexorably,” Richardson wrote in one particularly steamy passage about Wood. If Wood’s past is any indication, though, the 51-year-old federal judge can be expected to face this latest crisis the same way she has faced all tough situations with grace, honesty and guts, friends say. “What’s the big deal? She’s a superb judge,” said noted criminal defense lawyer Judd Burstein. “I could care less about her private life. “If they are going to start making an issue of federal judges committing adultery,” added Burstein, “it’s my guess that we might lose half the federal bench. It’s just absurd.
Wood had no criminal experience at the time D’Amato nominated her for the judgeship and, as a life-long Democrat, she could hardly be said to share D’Amato’s views. One theory is that Wood’s nomination was a way for D’Amato to thank Kramer, who, as a reporter for New York magazine, wrote a scathing article in August 1986 about D’Amato’s two Democratic opponents for Senate, Mark Green and John Dyson. The same kind of criticism would dog Kramer in February 1993, when Wood was forced to withdraw her nomination for U.S. attorney general following revelations that she had hired an illegal alien in 1986 to care for their child.