Judge is accused of taking too much time off

She says she was working remotely.

Palm Beach County Judge Marni Bryson is under fire for apparently taking too much time off when she should have been working at the courthouse, according to the official state watchdog that polices judicial misconduct.

The Judicial Qualifications Commission announced Wednesday it is filing five formal charges against Bryson, who has been on the bench since 2010. “You failed to devote full time and attention to your judicial duties during periods of 2016,” the first charge read. Identical charges were filed for 2017, 2018 and 2019. “You were absent from the courthouse and not otherwise working full time on a recurring basis.”

The fifth charge accuses Bryson of failing to keep a record of her absences or to adequately notify Palm Beach Chief Administrative Judge Krista Marx.

Bryson’s attorney, Scott Richardson, said she did nothing wrong, likening her courthouse absences to the kind of work from home that became normal during the pandemic.

“Judge Bryson always, without exception, completed all her own work on the County Court and voluntarily did hundreds of hours of additional work for Circuit Court Judges,” Richardson said. “The JQC takes issue with the fact that some of that work was done remotely before the pandemic made much judicial work remote.”

Specifics about the allegations, and Bryson’s defense, were not immediately available.

Separately, the judge was embroiled in a lawsuit against prominent South Florida lawyer

William Scherer, whom she accuses of blackmailing her over the existence of intimate photos he threatened to release during her 2015 divorce.

Scherer countersued in Broward County in 2019, accusing Bryson’s lawyers of extorting him to settle her lawsuit.

The countersuit was later dismissed, but Bryson’s original lawsuit against Scherer is still pending in Palm Beach Circuit Court.