John Gallagher, 84, remembered as stalwart, good-humored Sonoma County judge, prosecutor

Retired Sonoma County Superior Court Judge John Gallagher was a good-humored, forthright man of the law who worked to maintain his faith and upbeat approach to life despite the inhumanity he saw on stark display in criminal trials, and the revelation three decades ago that as an adolescent his only son was sexually assaulted by a Catholic priest.

Before Gallagher’s election to the local bench in 1976, he was a lead prosecutor with the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office. Through more than 20 years as a judge, he presided over about 50 homicide cases. In 1990, alleged mass murderer Ramon Salcido of Sonoma Valley was on his docket when he ruled that fairness required that the trial be moved out of county.

Gallagher was retired for two decades when, in 2017, the Tubbs Fire destroyed the charming, rural house and gardens northeast of Santa Rosa that became home to him and his wife, Wendy, in 1978.

The well-traveled jurist had endured a long run of declining health when he died Sunday. He was 84.

“John was a good, strong, honest man,” said retired Sonoma County District Attorney J. Michael Mullins. Both Gallagher and Mullins worked as lawyers in Orange County before moving north 50 years ago to join the staff of Sonoma County District Attorney John Hawkes.

Gallagher’s “reputation for honesty was sterling,” Mullins said.

Retired local judge Elliot Daum, who represented accused persons as a deputy public defender before his election to the bench, valued Gallagher’s “capacity to change and to evolve from a really hard-nosed prosecutor into someone who learned how to move into the middle.”

Speaking of Gallagher saddened but also brought a laugh to Daum as he recalled the humor and pranks that flowed from the judge, mostly late in his career.

Daum recalled being in Gallagher’s court as a public defender when, during the questioning of prospective jurors for potential conflicts or biases, a woman said she should reveal that she and Daum years before went sailing together. Daum’s courtroom rival that day, the prosecuting attorney, was asking the prospective juror to tell more about the day she and Daum shared on the water when Gallagher cut the prosecutor off.

Declared the judge, “Mr. Daum is married now and we don’t have to worry about what might have happened on that sailboat.”

Chris Andrian, the noted Sonoma County criminal defense attorney, remembers fretting when Gallagher became one of the earliest in a long line of local prosecutors to don a judge’s robe. Andrian anticipated a pro-prosecution tendency by Gallagher.

But that didn’t happen.

“He treated me fairly,” Andrian said. “He was a guy you could talk to. You could go into his chambers and chat with him.”

Andrian, too, had a chuckle over the jokes and pokes that would come from Gallagher. Specifically, the defense lawyer recalled walking into the judge’s courtroom with a prominent client.

Gallagher looked up at them, then quipped to Andrian, “So, is that the guy who paid you the big retainer so you could drive around the fancy BMW of yours?” Confesses Andrian, “I didn’t know what to say.”

John Joseph Gallagher was born in Anaheim in 1938. His father, Stephen Gallagher, was an attorney.

The younger Gallagher grew up in Orange County, then studied at Loyola University and earned a law degree from the University of Southern California. He was still in law school when he met and fell for Wendy Thayer.

The two of them would joke that they came to forgive the mutual friend who set them up for a blind date with ice cream sundaes at a coffee shop. They married in 1963 at a Catholic Church in La Habra. They would raise three children.

As a young attorney, John Gallagher went to work as a staffer in the Anaheim City Attorney’s office. After two years, he left to join his father’s law practice.

Not long later a desire for change led to his discovery that Sonoma County was hiring deputy district attorneys, charged with accepting investigations from police agencies and deciding whether or not to charge suspects with crimes.

Gallagher was hired, and in 1967 he and Wendy moved to Santa Rosa. In 1972, District Attorney Hawkes promoted him to assistant district attorney.

Four years later, at age 38, Gallagher ran for and won a seat on the Sonoma County Superior Court. His daughter, Kathleen Gallagher Jones, of Rancho Murieta, said he loved the work, but the demands and the exposure to so much violence and pain wore on him.

For relief, the judge played golf whenever he could — he shot two holes in one — and he savored hunting trips with the deputy sheriffs and probation officers he befriended at work, leisure time spent with his children and grandchildren, running, reading and playing his guitar.

The family suffered a devastating blow when, in the early 1990s, the Gallaghers’ son, Stephen, resolved to no longer hold inside a harrowing secret. He was 13 when a priest with the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, Gary Timmons, sexually abused him at the diocese’s Camp St. Michael in Leggett.

Stephen Gallagher lived with the trauma, silently, for nearly 20 years. He went public with the abuse in 1994 interviews with The Press Democrat.

Stephen Gallagher told one reporter, “I already put myself through a tremendous amount of self-hate for not doing this a long time ago.”

His father the judge was a lifelong Catholic prominent in the Santa Rosa Diocese. John Gallagher spoke out as a private citizen, demanding that church leaders address and resolve their failure to act aggressively against abusive priests such as Timmons.

Timmons was arrested in 1995 and later was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison for child molestation. The Santa Rosa Diocese paid out millions of dollars in settlements with victims of abuse.

John Gallagher ultimately switched to the Episcopalian church.

Gallagher admitted to being “burned out” when he retired from the bench in 1997. Wendy Gallagher retired that same year from teaching.

John Gallagher didn’t step back from law entirely, but took assignments as a “sitting judge” in Sacramento and Plumas counties, and as a private mediator and arbitrator.

When the Gallaghers’ house fell to the 2017 wildfires, they decided they could not rebuild. Instead, they moved to the Folsom area to be closer to daughter Jones.

She credits her father with teaching her to be kind to others.

“He loved Sonoma County,” Jones said. “He loved Santa Rosa and really tried to make it a safer place.

“He felt obliged to do the right thing.”

In addition to his wife, his son and his daughter Jones, Gallagher is survived by daughter Mary Beth Salmon, of Medford, Oregon, and seven grandchildren.

A 1 p.m. funeral Mass will be held Nov. 12 at St. Teresa of Avila Catholic Church in Bodega.

Editor’s Note: This story has been revised to provide a new time and funeral date.