Meet Judge Roy K. Altman, a U.S. District Court judge in the Southern District of Florida. Judge Altman was born in Caracas, Venezuela and immigrated with his family to Miami. After growing up in Miami, he graduated from Columbia University where he quarterbacked the football team and pitched on the baseball team. Following Columbia, Judge Altman went on to study at Yale Law where he served as Projects Editor for the Yale Law Journal.
After Yale, Judge Altman went on to serve as a federal prosecutor, twice receiving the Director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys’ Award for Superior Performance. After several years as a partner in a law firm, on April 4, 2019, Judge Altman was confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. At 36 years old, Judge Altman became the youngest federal district court judge in the country and the youngest federal judge ever appointed in the Southern District of Florida.
In my opinion, you are about to meet a generational mind. Born in 1982, Judge Altman is technically a millennial. Forget millennials, few Boomers or Gen Xers have reached the heights Judge Altman has obtained. To put it into context, in the United States, there are 1.35 million lawyers, and 30,000 of them are judges. Of that 30,000, only 870 are Article III judges. This means that after graduating law school, a lawyer has a 0.064% chance of becoming an Article III judge.
It isn’t an overstatement to say that Judge Altman is one of the most accomplished individuals in America. But this achievement isn’t what is most impressive about him. What makes Judge Altman outstanding is his moral leadership.
An example of his moral leadership is highlighted in a recent article in Bloomberg.
In my view, Judge Altman is setting the type of example Americans should follow. He is pursuing an honest and fact-based discussion about the conflict while refusing to cower to the mob of moral relativism.
When I think about Judge Altman and his actions after October 7, I recall a quote from the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks as he analyzed Esther’s plea: “How can I stand and watch disaster befall my people?” To this, Rabbi Sacks said, “To be moral is to live with and for others, sharing their responsibility, participating in their suffering, protesting their wrongs, arguing their cause.”
Thankfully, because of Judge Altman, we have one of the great legal minds of the 21st century arguing the cause of Israel, the Jewish people, and all of Western civilization.
