Garrity, (Wendell) Arthur, Jr (1920– )

US judge. He became US attorney for Massachusetts (1961–66) and was appointed to the federal bench for Massachusetts in 1966. In 1974 he came to national prominence when he ruled that Boston's school officials had deliberately maintained a segregated school system, and he placed the entire system under federal control. During the next 13 years he handed down some 400 orders that had major impact on the conduct of the schools – particularly in the matter of bussing. In 1987 an Appeal's Court ruled that the Boston system no longer needed to be supervised by a federal judge, but Garrity continued to hand down specific rulings as late as 1990.

The son of a lawyer, Garrity was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was educated at Holy Cross (graduated 1941) and, after serving with the US Army in World War II, Harvard Law School (1946). He served as a government lawyer (1948–50) and the went into private practice in Boston (1950–61). Active in Democratic politics, he worked on John F Kennedy's successful 1958 senate campaign.