Superior Court Judge Gary N. Wilcox is accused of creating 40 public TikTok videos, some in his judicial robe in his court chambers or partly undressed in his bed – containing profanity, graphic sexual references to female and male body parts, violence, misogyny, and racist terms, under the pseudonym “Sal Tortorella.”
Wilcox recorded a TikTok video wearing a “Beavis and Butt-Head” T-shirt while walking through the Bergen County courthouse with Get Down by Nas playing, according to a formal complaint lodged by the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct.
“The song contains explicit lyrics concerning a criminal case and a courtroom shooting as well as derogatory and discriminatory terms, drug and gang references, and the killing of a doctor in a hospital who treated another gang member,” the complaint says.
Wilcox, a Harvard Law School graduate and former Assistant U.S. Attorney, was nominated to the bench by Gov. Chris Christie in 2011. He received tenure in 2018 and is assigned to the criminal court division in Bergen County.
The TikTok videos were posted between April 11, 2021, and March 4, 2023.
Reached on his cell phone by the New Jersey Globe, Wilcox declined to comment.
Smiling at the camera with the screen text, “When an ex-girlfriend calls you “Santa” because of your new white beard,” visible and Busta Rhymes’ Touch It playing in the background, the complaint states the following lyrics were audible during the video: “For the record, just a second, I’m freakin’ it out. While she tryin’ to touch, see, I was peepin’ it out. She turned around and was tryin’ to put my d**k in her mouth. I let her.”
Seated in a car, Wilcox appears on TikTok wearing a “Freedom of Speech” T-shirt, and lip-syncs: “Go ahead baby. You hittin’ them corners too god damn fast. You gotta slow this motha****a down. You understand? I almost spilled my [Cognac] on this 200-dollar suit.”
Wearing a suit and holding cash in his chambers, Wilcox “pretends to light a match while lip-syncing the following lyrics from Sure Thing by Miguel: “ If you be the cash, I’ll be the rubber band. You be the match, I will be a fuse, boom. Painter, baby, you could be the muse. I’m the reporter, baby, you could be the news. ‘Cause you’re the cigarette, and I’m the smoker. We raise a bet, ’cause you’re the joker.”
In another video recorded in his chambers, the 59-year-old Wilcox, in a T-shirt with his face close to the camera, lip-syncs lyrics from Jump by Rihanna: “If you want it let’s do it. Ride it, my pony. My saddle is waitin’, come and jump on it. If you want it, let’s do it.”
Dressed in a suit and tie in his chambers, with law books behind him, Wilcox lips-syncs: “All my life, I’ve been waiting for somebody to whoop my ass. I mean business! You think you can run up on me and whip my monkey ass? Come on. Come on!”
“By his conduct in posting these and similar videos to TikTok, (Wilcox) exhibited poor judgment and demonstrated disrespect for the Judiciary and an inability to conform to the high standards of conduct expected of judges,” the complaint stated.
The complaint alleges that Wilcox’s videos violate three rules of judicial canons, including one that “requires judges to observe high standards of conduct so that the integrity and independence of the Judiciary may be preserved” and one that “requires judges to avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety and to act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the Judiciary.
He is also accused of violating a third rule which “requires judges to conduct their extrajudicial activities in a manner that would not cast reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially as a judge, demean the judicial office, or interfere with the proper performance of judicial duties.”
Wilcox was an unsucecssful Democratic candidate for councilman in Harrington Park in 2007.