John Clinton Gray

John Clinton Gray entered upon the practice of the law about the year 1866 with an excellent equipment. For he had studied at the University of Berlin, had graduated at the Harvard Law School, and had taken law courses in the University of New York, from which he had received an A.M. Although a man of means, he devoted himself assiduously to his profession. His firm of Gray & Davenport were eminently successful in railroad litigation; besides which the senior member was referee in a number of large will cases. When only forty-six, at the request of many leading men, Governor Hill appointed him to fill a vacancy in the Court of Appeals. At the next election Judge Gray was enthusiastically elected for a full term of fourteen years, and upon the expiry of that, reelected in 1902. He retired in 1913 at the age of seventy. Many notable opinions remain as honorable monuments to his twenty-five years upon the Bench. His contribution to the jurisprudence of his State will compare with that of those judges and chancellors who, with the assistance of the Bar, have made the law of New York facile princeps in these United States.

Henry Osborn Taylor
1916 Century Association Yearbook