Portal:Texas/Selected Biography/28

-->

William Paul Brady (February 12, 1876 – February 27, 1943) was an American lawyer who, between 1909 to around 1914, served as the first district attorney for Texas's 70th judicial district, with jurisdiction over eleven western counties, and from 1917 to 1919 was the judge for the newly created El Paso County Court at Law. Brady prosecuted several high-profile murder cases as a district attorney, including of Agnes Orner, and, in a death-penalty case that has since been termed a "legal lynching" of a Mexican boy charged with killing a white woman.

In Austin, Pecos, El Paso, and San Luis Obispo, Brady remained deeply involved in the social, political, and business milieu. The El Paso Herald described him as "one of the best known public men in west Texas". A Democrat, Brady spoke at and organized numerous gatherings and attended county and statewide conventions. A Catholic, he was involved in innumerable social functions, and at one point served as the state president of the Catholic Knights of America in Texas. Likewise, "for many years among the front ranks of our business men", as the Pecos Times put it, Brady incorporated both the Cruces Oil Corporation and the Pecos Valley Southern Railway.