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The chief judge of the Camden Municipal Court was reprimanded Wednesday for a series of what judicial ethics authorities said were "aggressive" emails to a city prosecutor—emails that the judge later characterized as "private" and "confidential" despite them concerning an active case.

Chief Judge Christine Jones-Tucker was found by the state Supreme Court to have violated several judicial canons in the emails, sent to then-Camden municipal prosecutor Kristina M. Bryant beginning in late 2016 and in events that followed.

The court issued a public reprimand rather than the more serious censure urged by the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct in a presentment dated June 28, which found that Jones-Tucker also made "unjustified, demeaning and inappropriate" remarks to Bryant in court.

"Those emails depict a judge in an intemperate state responding belligerently to the municipal prosecutor, after-hours, about a simple scheduling issue with phrases such as, 'Too bad. That is the trial date. Get with the program,'" the ACJC said in the June 28 presentment, adding that Jones-Tucker "remained hostile to Ms. Bryant four days later" in a court hearing. The committee added, "we question Respondent's mindset in choosing to engage in this excessive fashion with counsel, over email, late in the evening on New Year's Eve."

Neither Jones-Tucker nor any court staff could be reached by phone at Camden Municipal Court shortly after the order was made public Wednesday. Jones-Tucker's counsel in the matter, Carl Poplar of Cherry Hill, didn't return a call about the order.

A call to ACJC Disciplinary Counsel Maureen Bauman, who signed the committee's July 2018 formal complaint, was redirected to the judiciary's communications office. A judiciary spokeswoman said the ACJC would not comment.

Bryant is now chief municipal prosecutor in Trenton, a position she took last September, she told the Law Journal by phone.

Bryant had filed a civil suit against the suit over the issue with Jones-Tucker, but withdrew the suit upon taking the position in Trenton, Bryant said Wednesday. "I wanted to move on," she said. "I found out what the [disciplinary] recommendation was and was satisfied."

According to the presentment and prior documents and Law Journal reports, Jones-Tucker was admitted in New Jersey in 1984, appointed to the municipal court in June 2013 and elevated to the court's chief judge in August 2016.

The exchanges with Bryant came in connection with a drunken-driving case on Dec. 30 and Dec. 31, 2016, when Bryant was asking to have a February 2017 trial date postponed because of witness scheduling. The trial date had been rescheduled once before.

Jones-Tucker in a series of messages repeatedly told Bryant that the matter was "not a game," and told her to "get with the program" and that Jones-Tucker was "sick of this," according to the documents.

Then, Bryant and the defendant's lawyer, John Sitzler of Sitzler & Sitzler in Hainesport, appeared before Jones-Tucker on Jan. 6, 2017, in the case to inquire about a firm trial date. He had learned of the emails between Jones-Tucker and Bryant and asked the judge for copies of the messages, since he had never been copied.

"Despite having exchanged those emails with Ms. Bryant only four days earlier from her Camden City email account, Respondent disclaimed any knowledge of them to Mr. Sitzler and directed that he seek such 'confidential' emails from the Court Director," the ACJC said in its presentment.

Then moments later, Jones-Tucker spoke to Bryant ex parte about the emails, saying she had "grave concerns" about Sitzler's requests to see her "personal" emails and thereafter seeking to arrange for all of Bryant's cases to be reassigned because of a conflict of interest, the ACJC recounted.

Bryant filed an ethics grievance with the ACJC soon after, and the matter also was referred to the ACJC by Camden County Assignment Judge Deborah Silverman Katz, who in March 2018 ordered Jones-Tucker temporarily suspended without pay for two weeks because of her conduct in the case involving the emails, and in separate dealings with court personnel and city officials, according to the presentment.

After the ACJC's July 2018 formal complaint, Jones-Tucker filed an answer in which she denied any ethics violations. The ACJC held a hearing late last year, in which Jones-Tucker "was unable to explain or justify the evident disparity between her professed lack of knowledge about the precise emails to which Mr. Sitzler referred when requesting copies of them on January 6, 2017, and her clear recall of those same emails when addressing this issue with Ms. Bryant moments later on the record," according to the ACJC.

The committee, with member David P. Anderson Jr. not participating, found that alleged violations of several ethics rules had been proven—including Canon 3, Rule 3.5, mandating courtesy to lawyers, litigants and others; and rules against creating conflicts—and recommended a censure.

The ACJC did find insufficient evidence to support a charge that Jones-Tucker had made misrepresentations to the committee.

The Supreme Court issued an order to show cause last Sept. 13 and heard arguments Tuesday before issuing the order Wednesday.