Who Is Maryanne Trump Barry, Donald Trump’s Sister?

Donald Trump joked earlier in the primary season that he would nominate his sister – Judge Maryanne Trump Barry — to the Supreme Court. Who is she?

Who Is Maryanne Trump Barry

Barry, 78, serves as a Senior United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. After serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, President Ronald Reagan nominated Barry to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey in 1983. Bill Clinton nominated her to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1999.

It was Barry’s younger brother, Trump, according to Barry, who helped jump-start her career as a judge. ”There’s no question Donald helped me get on the bench,” she was quoted as saying in The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire. ”I was good, but not that good.”

Trump also acknowledged that he may have had his lawyer lobby to help Barry get the post – but maintained that it was his sister’s talents that earned her the job. ”I’m no different than any other brother that loves his sister,” Trump said, according to the Washington Post. ”My sister got the appointment totally on her own merit.”

Trump’s chief rival for the GOP nomination for the presidency, Sen. Ted Cruz has used Trump’s close relationship with his sister to dissuade conservatives from voting for him. Though Barry is a Republican, she wrote the opinion for a ruling that struck down a New Jersey law that sought to ban “partial-birth abortions.”

“You know, the one person he [Trump] has suggested that would make a good justice is his sister,” Cruz said. “She is a hardcore pro-abortion liberal judge. And he said she would make a terrific justice.”

Attorney Matthew Stiegler has countered Cruz’s statements in regard to Barry, whom he’s worked alongside for a number of years. “Judge Barry is a moderate-conservative Republican centrist,” Stiegler told the Post. “She is widely respected and thoroughly mainstream.”

Barry, unlike her bombastic brother, leads a life thoroughly outside of the spotlight and has not often spoken publicly. However, back in 2011, she delivered the commencement address at Fairfield University, where she opened up about what she thought of when she thought of success.

“When I say success. I don’t speak only of professional success,” she said. “Success can be something as simple as the warm feeling one gets if you see a stranger that you sense to be lonely and smiling at that stranger and having that stranger return your smile; it can be bringing a child into the world and raising a child to be a good man or a good woman.”

As of yet, it’s unknown if Barry supports her brother’s bid for the presidency.