Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Carlia Brady and Raymond Brown of Scarinci Hollenback. Courtesy photos

As the state Supreme Court seeks to remove her from the bench for allegedly harboring her fugitive boyfriend, Superior Court Judge Carlia Brady has parted ways with her high-profile defense lawyer and is now representing herself in the disciplinary case.

Brady retained Raymond Brown of Scarinci Hollenbeck earlier this year to represent her before the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct. The ACJC indicated in September that it planned to remove Brady from her judicial office over her failure to cooperate with the Woodbridge Township Police Department's efforts to apprehend her then-boyfriend, Jason Prontnicki, who was wanted on criminal charges.

In the 78-page brief that accompanies her motion to dismiss, dated Nov. 16, Brady took a swipe at Brown. "While Respondent's former ACJC attorneys failed to request any remedy for the WTPD's destruction of exculpatory evidence, Respondent prays that this Court does not visit the sins of her attorneys on the client," Brady wrote.

The dig against Brown is an apparent reference to Brady's claim, first raised in a separate suit she filed against the Woodbridge Police Department in U.S. District Court, that she left a voice mail with a detective to report that Prontnicki had just left her house. Brady claims police destroyed that message and deleted a portion from a transcript of her call.

Brady, who was confirmed to the bench in February 2013, was suspended without pay four months later after Woodbridge police charged her with official misconduct and harboring a fugitive. She was cleared of all criminal charges in proceedings that stretched out for nearly five years. The ACJC subsequently accused Brady in May of breaking four canons of the Code of Judicial Conduct.

In a letter brief in support of her motion to dismiss the ACJC charges, Brady said the committee wrongly imputed a duty on judges to enforce an arrest warrant, which she said ran contrary to the separation-of-powers principal in the federal and state constitutions. Brady also said the ACJC's case relies on evidence of recorded telephone messages that are fraudulent, and that witnesses testifying for the committee lack credibility.

Brady also claims in her brief that the ACJC improperly relies on the expert testimony of psychiatrist Carla Rodgers concerning Brady's mental state, and that the penalty of removal is too harsh.

"Any punishment by this court against respondent, based on the adoption of the ACJC's reasoning and findings, which has no basis in the code [of judicial conduct] and violates the Constitution, serves only as pretext to steal respondent's approximately $783,750 in back pay. Accordingly, justice requires that this court dismiss the presentment in its entirety and end the corruption perpetrated by the [Woodbridge Township Police Department]," she wrote in the brief.

Brady added that the ACJC presentment against her "invites this court to violate the Constitution by imposing upon respondent, retrospectively, and all judges, prospectively, the unprecedented duty to perform an executive branch police function, vis-a-vis enforcing arrest warrants. Due to the profound impact on the judicial and executive branches which may result from this Court's decision, respondent prays that each justice of this Supreme Court perform her/his own painstaking de novo review of the totality of the evidence, rather than rely on the ACJC's conflated analysis and findings which clearly reflect that committee's failure to do so themselves."

The ACJC has a Dec. 4 deadline to respond to Brady's motion to dismiss or modify the charges.

Brady and Brown did not respond to calls about the case. A Judiciary spokeswoman confirmed that Brown is no longer representing Brady.