{"id":242401,"date":"2026-04-09T18:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T18:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/242401\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T18:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T18:56:08","slug":"houston-attorney-who-criticized-judge-over-viral-video-doesnt-appear-in-court-as-requested-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/242401\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston attorney who criticized judge over viral video doesn\u2019t appear in court as requested \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Kyle McClenagan\/HPM<\/p>\n

A plaque outside Judge Nathan Milliron\u2019s courtroom at the Harris County Civil Courthouse on April 9, 2026.<\/p>\n

A scheduled court hearing passed without incident Thursday morning after Judge Nathan Milliron had ordered a prominent Houston attorney to appear in court for comments he made about a viral video of Milliron berating a Harris County employee. <\/p>\n

Houston attorney James Stafford did not appear in Milliron’s downtown courtroom as scheduled Thursday as reporters and other Houston-area attorneys packed into a small gallery. Although Milliron reportedly appeared briefly on the bench for an unrelated hearing, he did not call Stafford’s name or take any actions against him, according to the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association.<\/p>\n

Members of the association \u2014 which publicly criticized Milliron’s conduct last week<\/a> \u2014 were present at the courthouse Thursday morning in support of Stafford.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

Brent Mayr, the association’s president, called Milliron’s lack of action a victory for Stafford.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday is a good day,\u201d Mayr said. \u201cWe see that the judge is not taking any further illegal action against James Stafford. We hope that it stays that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, Milliron ordered Stafford to appear in his courtroom, accusing Stafford of ex parte communication \u2014 a one-sided communication between a judge and one party of a legal proceeding, according to emails obtained by Houston Public Media. <\/p>\n

RELATED: Houston attorneys call out Harris County judge following viral clip of him berating county employee<\/a><\/p>\n

Stafford had emailed Milliron about a video clip showing the judge being impolite to an IT employee, which went viral online.<\/p>\n

In his email, Stafford told Milliron he had seen the video and said Milliron should apologize to the employee. Milliron responded by ordering Stafford to appear in court this week.<\/p>\n

Stafford subsequently claimed in an email to the judge that their exchange was not ex parte communication, because Stafford is not involved in any cases on Milliron\u2019s docket.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an officer of the Court I obey all lawful orders,\u201d Stafford wrote in a Thursday statement to Houston Public Media. \u201cI find no authority that an email is a lawful order thus I did not appear.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Via Facebook<\/p>\n

A campaign photo of Harris County District Judge Nathan Milliron.<\/p>\n

Wade Smith is the chair of the lawyers association’s “Strike Force” committee, which supports local attorneys by showing up in person when a lawyer is ordered to appear before a judge. <\/p>\n

Smith said Milliron lacked legal standing to issue such an order. <\/p>\n

“When one of our longtime members and well-esteemed members, Mr. Stafford, was purportedly ordered to appear in front of this judge for what appeared to be contempt, it struck us as being a great judicial overreach and unlawful,” Smith said. “So, we came because of Mr. Stafford, otherwise we would not really have been all that concerned with trying to police just general judicial behavior.” <\/p>\n

Smith argued Stafford was exercising his constitutional right in reaching out to the judge. <\/p>\n

“There was no ex parte communication, and everything about that was wrong, and this is constitutionally protected First Amendment speech that James was exercising in telling the judge, an elected official, \u2018Hey, I think you’re misbehaving, you owe that guy an apology,\u2019” Smith said. <\/p>\n

Mayr said the association was still considering whether or not to file a complaint with Texas\u2019 State Commission on Judicial Conduct, which oversees judges. He said he was aware that complaints had reportedly been filed by others. <\/p>\n

“Obviously, we’re going to watch and hope that the Commission on Judicial Conduct, maybe in other manners, takes appropriate action against this judge if they feel that it’s necessary,” Mayr said. “If there’s any problems, we will not hesitate to step up, as we would against any judge.”<\/p>\n

Milliron has not made any public comments regarding the viral video or his email exchange with Stafford. The judge, a Republican who was elected in 2024, has not responded to repeated requests for comment from Houston Public Media. <\/p>\n

An apology by Milliron is still in order, Mayr said. <\/p>\n

“At a minimum, that’s what James Stafford wanted, was an apology to that employee,” Mayr said. “I think he needs to follow that with an apology to Mr. Stafford [for] trying to exercise judicial authority that he does not have. And I think he owes an apology to the people of Harris County. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyle McClenagan\/HPM A plaque outside Judge Nathan Milliron\u2019s courtroom at the Harris County Civil Courthouse on April 9,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2441,405,88668,49010,56,58,57,89150,88059,66,223,89611],"class_list":{"0":"post-242401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-court","9":"tag-harris-county","10":"tag-harris-county-criminal-lawyers-association","11":"tag-harris-county-judges","12":"tag-houston","13":"tag-houston-headlines","14":"tag-houston-news","15":"tag-james-stafford","16":"tag-judge-nathan-milliron","17":"tag-local","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-viral-judge-video"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}