Judge Joe Brown Net Worth

Joseph Brown was born on 5 July 1947, in Washington, D.C. USA, and is a well-known judge and a television personality, mostly known for being the judge of Shelby County, Tennessee Criminal Court, and also as an arbiter of the realityTV  show called “Judge Joe Brown”.

So how rich is Joe Brown? It has been estimated by celebrity dot money that Joe’s net worth is over $45 million, during his career which began in the late 1960s – reports are that his salary for each season of “Judge Joe Brown” had risen to $20 million by the end of its run, although Joe reckons that it was more like five million!

Judge Joe Brown Net Worth $45 Million

Joe Brown has a bachelor in political science degree, and he also studied at law school in the University of California, Los Angeles. Joe’s career began when he started to work as a prosecutor in Memphis, actually the first African-American to hold such a position in the city; from that time Brown’s net worth started to grow. As he was successful while working as a prosecutor, Joe decided to open a law firm of his own, and later worked in the State Criminal Court of Shelby County, Tennessee. Joe was noticed by television producers, and he received an invitation to be a part of a reality show, which was centred on binding arbitration, and during the making of which Brown had an opportunity to work with Sonia Montejano and Jeanne Zelasko. In 1998 the show entitled ‘Judge Joe Brown’ aired for the first time on CBS TV, and continued until the 2012-13 season; the immediate success of the show had a huge impact on the growth of Joe’s net worth, especially as it was eventually syndicated throughout the US.  This show not only made Joe more famous but was also different, as he was one of the first African Americans to have this kind of show on television. As mentioned before, the show was really popular and its ratings were one of the highest until the last couple of seasons, so there is no surprise that the show was one of the main sources of Brown’s high net worth. Despite this fact it was decided to cancel this show in 2013, at which point it had become the second longest-running continuous TV show of its kind, but the highest rated chaired by a male, apparently partly because of his aggressive demeanour towards litigants when he had decided their guilt. Among the litigants were noted musical performers Ike Turner, Coolio and Rick James.

During his career, Joe has also had some unpleasant experiences, for example when in 2014 he was arrested because of verbal abuse during a court hearing in which he was representing a child support litigant. Fortunately, it ended quickly as Brown was later released from jail after five days, however, he was subsequently banned from practicing law in Tennessee in 2016.

To talk about Joe Brown’s personal life, he has been married twice – he divorced second wife Deborah Herron in 2017 having married her in 2001, and has two children from his first marriage.