TRENTON, N.J. — A New Jersey Superior Court judge was suspended for three months on Monday after the state’s top court found that his TikTok activity had brought disrepute to the judiciary. Judge Gary Wilcox, 59, was reprimanded for posting dozens of videos, some recorded within courthouse premises, containing content deemed inappropriate for a member of the judiciary.
Appointed to the bench in 2011 by then-Gov. Chris Christie, Wilcox served in the family court before being reassigned to the criminal division in 2016. The controversy arose after the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct filed a formal complaint, citing 40 videos posted between April 2021 and March 2023 under the pseudonym “Sal Tortorella.” The since-deleted videos included lip-sync performances and scenes filmed in courthouse chambers and hallways, some of which featured profane, violent, or sexually suggestive content.
Among the videos highlighted in the complaint was one showing Wilcox partially dressed in his judicial robes while lying on a bed. In another, he appeared in chambers surrounded by law books, lip-syncing a line referencing a physical confrontation.
“All my life, I’ve been waiting for somebody to whoop my a–,” he mouthed in the clip.
Additional videos included one where Wilcox walked through the Bergen County Courthouse wearing a “Beavis and Butt-Head” T-shirt as explicit lyrics from a Nas song played in the background, and another where he sat in a car lip-syncing a dialogue about spilling cognac on a suit.
The content of a Busta Rhymes song with sexually explicit lyrics was also used in a separate video.
The committee argued that Wilcox’s behavior undermined public confidence in the judiciary and demonstrated a lack of judgment. In one instance, he had even posted a message celebrating “100 followers” on TikTok, accompanied by three smiling face emojis.
