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Hale, 33, is currently awaiting sentencing.
Hale's conviction came almost five years after he first attracted national attention when a follower, Benjamin Smith, went on a deadly shooting rampage, targeting minorities in Illinois and Indiana.
Hale's reaction to Smith's three-day shooting spree — Hale laughed about it and imitated gunfire in secretly recorded tapes played for the jury — was part of the prosecution's case. Smith killed two people and wounded nine others before killing himself in July 1999 as police closed in.
Hale never testified during his two-week trial. His defense attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, called no witnesses, saying the prosecution's evidence was the weakest he had seen in a major case. The defense argued that Hale never asked anyone to kill the judge.
Lefkow, 61, served as a federal magistrate and a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge before President Clinton nominated her for the District Court bench in 2000.
Michael Lefkow was a graduate of North Central College in Naperville and earned a law degree from Northwestern University. The two married in 1975, and he ran unsuccessfully for Cook County judge in 2002, according the Tribune.