Christopher Gregory, the executive director of Colorado’s Commission on Judicial Discipline, was removed Friday following a tumultuous tenure in which the commission and the Colorado Supreme Court squared off over issues of reform.

In a statement provided Friday to The Denver Gazette, the commission would only say Gregory is “on leave and is unavailable to engage in Commission on Judicial Discipline business.” The commission’s special counsel, Jeff Walsh, is serving as interim director.

Gregory could not be immediately reached for comment.

However, others familiar with the matter who would only speak anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly confirmed Gregory’s two-year tenure on the job probably is over. They would not provide a specific reason for his removal.

Still unclear is whether Gregory will keep his job, is being pressed to resign, or faces firing, although several sources said he is not expected to return.

It is the second time Gregory will have been ousted from the commission. The first was as its chairman in 2021, when news broke about a judicial scandal that since rocked the court and precipitated wide-ranging changes to how discipline gets done in Colorado.

Gregory, an attorney, was not reappointed as a commissioner by Gov. Jared Polis, a highly unusual outcome, especially since Gregory was its chairman and eligible for second four-year term. Governors frequently reappoint commission members to a second term.

The commission then hired Gregory as its executive director later that year. While the Supreme Court and Polis control the appointments to the 10-member commission, the executive director is independently hired by the panel.

Gregory’s time with the commission straddled a judicial scandal that began in 2019 with the revelation of a multimillion-dollar contract awarded to a former Judicial Department executive who faced firing for financial irregularities.

The issue exploded in 2021 with the revelation that the contract was allegedly a quid pro quo scheme designed to prevent that executive – then-chief of staff Mindy Masias – from revealing in a tell-all sex-discrimination lawsuit years of judicial misconduct that went unreported or were handled quietly.

What followed were more than a half-dozen investigations into the allegations, none of them concluding further than that then-Chief Justice Nathan “Ben” Coats had a poor command of the state’s massive Judicial Department.

The commission sanctioned Coats last year over the scandal, the only time a Supreme Court justice has been disciplined in Colorado. Although Coats retired in December 2020, the sanction means he cannot serve in any capacity as a senior judge. He has not renewed his law license, state records show.

Gregory’s ouster met with widespread shock Friday, especially by those who served with him. Others, however, speculated that Gregory’s demise is merely the latest in a long line of “bodies in the road” that have resulted from the Masias scandal.

“I served on the commission with Mr. Gregory for six years. He was a moving force behind the recent new era of transparency and effectiveness of judicial ethics accountability in Colorado,” said 4th Judicial District Judge David Prince, who left the commission in June as its co-chairman.

“He has been incorruptible in his dedication to pursue cases without fear or favor,” Prince said. “I am disappointed to hear that he may no longer serve the people of Colorado. I have no information about what has happened and only know he was well regarded and appreciated by the commission at my last meeting in June.

“I hope this does not signal a change in the positive direction of the last few years in ethics accountability.”

Prince was one of several replaced on the commission last year and was often an outspoken critic of the barriers it faced while pursuing its own inquiries into the Masias affair. Prince only served a single full term and was eligible for reappointment by the Supreme Court.

Prince also was one of the commission’s members who said their law license was threatened by the state’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel over comments he made to the legislature during hearings regarding changes to the judicial discipline system.

The commission, with Gregory as its leading voice, and the Judicial Department grappled for months over the lack of information it said it was getting in its inquiries. At one point, the commission was forced to issue a subpoena for records from the department, the first time in its history.

The Masias scandal led to at least three firings or resignations in the Judicial Department. Masias and the author of the memo, then-Human Resources Director Eric Brown, and then-State Court Administrator Christopher Ryan, were each referred to the Denver District Attorney’s Office for prosecution, but nothing materialized because prosecutors said they had little time to cobble anything together before the statute of limitations expired.

Brown and Masias have never spoken publicly about the scandal. Brown was deposed in a federal lawsuit on a different matter that referred to the memo but offered no salient details about its intent or contents.

Former state Sen. Pete Lee of Colorado Springs chaired a 2022 summertime special legislative committee that took testimony about potential judicial reform, while looking to press for changes. His tenure ended midstream with unfounded allegations – in part because of records submitted by the OARC – that he had committed voter fraud. Although charged with a felony, the charges were dismissed not long after Lee stepped down from the committee.

Lee on Friday said he is “very disappointed” to hear of Gregory’s removal and called him “an upstanding public servant.”

That special committee made a stream of recommendations, many of them approved by the legislature. Voters will see one of them in November, a state constitutional amendment that will drastically change the state’s method of judicial discipline.

Former Pueblo County Chief District Judge Dennis Maes on Friday told The Denver Gazette that he thought Gregory’s ouster is in retaliation for his staunch posture on judicial discipline.

“Obviously, I’m not surprised,” Maes said in an interview. “It’s clear to me that the Supreme Court leadership is in retaliatory mode, getting everyone who exposed them as dishonest and a lack of integrity with their own rules and regulations.”

Maes said he has a pending discipline case against Supreme Court Chief Justice Brian Boatright and “any other justices who were on the bench at the time” over public statements they made when the Masias memo went public in February 2021.

Request for Evaluation of current members of the Colorado Supreme CourtLuige Del Puerto
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Maes confirmed his complaint centered on statements the court made that Coats was not culpable for any misconduct and that the allegations of a quid pro quo contract were false.

Those statements, Maes said, violated the state’s code of judicial conduct requiring impartiality and no comments about pending or impending litigation.

Maes, who said the commission had found merit in his complaint and had moved it to the investigative stage, said Boatright was expected to answer the allegations this week. It’s unclear if he had.

Gregory last week told legislators the commission is investigating more than 70 judges for allegedly violating laws requiring them to file annual financial disclosure statements with the secretary of state.

The Denver Gazette last summer revealed that 1 in 6 sitting judges had failed to file the documents, a ratio that increased significantly when the complement of senior judges was included. Several judges had not filed the disclosures for years, the newspaper found.