A New Jersey appeals court has ruled that former Superior Court Judge Stephen Thompson should forfeit his entire judicial pension based on his 2005 conviction for having sex with an underage boy in Russia.

The Appellate Division affirmed a ruling by the board of trustees of the Judicial Retirement System that Thompson, a Superior Court judge from 1989 to 2003, should lose his pension based on his conviction on charges that he traveled to Russia to have sex with a boy believed to be between 13 and 16 years old.

The appeals court declined to disturb the board's decision forfeiting Thompson's entire Judicial Retirement System service and salary credit based on actions that showed “a high degree of moral turpitude” and “violated the public trust.” The ruling means that Thompson, now 72, may not collect his $51,916 annual pension.

Thompson had claimed the Judicial Retirement System wrongly forfeited his entire 26 years of pension credit based on his conviction for an offense that occurred only a few months before he retired from the bench. Thompson claimed credit for his service as a Superior Court judge and for prior stints as an administrative law judge and municipal prosecutor. But the appeals court said Thompson mischaracterized his offense as a single, isolated incident or act.

He was found not guilty by reason of insanity of the possession of thousands of images of child pornography, which suggests the jury concluded he actually possessed the illicit materials, the judges said. Contrary to his contention, such content was not a single isolated incident or act, they said. In addition, Thompson used a paid service to hide his web-browsing activities on a judiciary-issued laptop computer that he used to acquire and store pornographic pictures of children and to arrange his trip to Russia, Appellate Division Judges Richard Geiger and Catherine Enright said.

Thompson also claimed before the Appellate Division that the pension board overstated the relationship between his misconduct and his official duties. His misconduct related to and touched on his judicial office because he used his judiciary-issued laptop computer to engage in his criminal activity, Geiger and Enright said.

Thompson first applied for his pension when he retired from his judgeship in 2003. The application was placed in abeyance under a state law, which holds that pension payments to public employees convicted of crimes involving moral turpitude are suspended during their period of confinement. Thompson renewed his pension application in December 2014, six months after he was released from incarceration.

Thompson enlisted in the U.S. Army after college and was deployed to Vietnam in 1969. There, he was gravely injured, losing his right leg, bladder, penis and testicles. He spent over two years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, undergoing multiple surgeries and rehabilitation. Following his honorable discharge, Thompson attended law school and was admitted to the bar in 1975. He held positions as municipal prosecutor and municipal judge before he was appointed to the Superior Court in Camden in 1989.

He was arrested and suspended from the bench in April 2003 in connection with a child pornography investigation that turned up thousands of illicit images in his homes in Haddon Township and Avalon. Among the items found by investigators was a videotape showing Thompson having sex with a young male that was recorded during his trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, in September 2002.

The state's charges against Thompson were later superseded by a federal indictment on charges of possessing child pornography and enticing a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct, which was transported in interstate and foreign commerce. A jury found him guilty of sexual exploitation of a minor and not guilty by reason of insanity to possession of child pornography.

Thompson was sentenced to a 10-year prison term and ordered to pay a $25,000 fine and register as a sex offender.

A report produced at sentencing said that Bureau of Prisons mental health professionals had diagnosed Thompson as a pedophile, and that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his war injuries.

The state Supreme Court disbarred Thompson in 2009.

Thompson's lawyer, Brian Pelloni of Hornstine & Pelloni in Philadelphia, did not respond to a request for comment.