Prominent Texas judge battling ‘manic behavior’ rumors is not missing, brother claims

A high-flying Texas judge who quietly vanished from the courtroom earlier this month amid mental illness rumors is not missing — but is out on medical leave.

Judge Kelli Johnson, one of Harris County’s longest-serving current jurists, hasn’t been seen at the 178th District Courthouse in Houston since May 1, with allegations swirling that she was suffering from “manic behavior.”

But her brother set the record straight Friday, telling the Daily Beast that his sister was “fine” and that her family and wife are in “daily contact with her.”

“She’s not missing, she’s on medical leave,” Clay Johnson, a local attorney, said.

“She’s in touch with the family, and everything is fine … and that’s about all I can say.”

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Whether Johnson’s medical issues are physical or mental — or related to the gossip about her unstable behavior — is not clear.

A court spokesperson could not be reached for comment Friday, but previously only confirmed that “Johnson is out for personal matters” after initially refusing to address the judge’s unexplained absence.

Johnson was recently in contact with cops following an incident near her home, according to a May 4 police report that described a “disturbance/CIT” — a police acronym for crisis intervention.

The exact circumstances surrounding that incident weren’t immediately known.

A court staffer alluded to ABC13 earlier this week that Johnson had been exhibiting signs of “manic behavior” before she left the bench.

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“She’s a danger to herself and to the community,” the staffer alleged.

Her courtroom absence also comes just weeks after she presided over the trial of a man convicted of beating his girlfriend’s 8-year-old son to death in 2020.

Johnson took just 20 minutes to find Brian Coulter guilty of capital murder in Kendrick Lee’s fatal beating, telling the killer, “This is probably one of the most horrific set of facts that I have ever had to witness, to listen to and to imagine.”

“I’ve been practicing criminal law for 24-ish years,” she told the killer. “I thought I’d heard everything. I thought I’d gotten pretty good at compartmentalizing things that occur up here when I go back to my own family, to my own life. But that stopped with this case.

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“Those children have haunted me this last week,” Johnson said. “They have haunted my mind and they have interrupted my safe space when I leave this building.”

Clay Johnson declined to tell the Daily Beast whether the case had any impact on his sister’s decision to take medical leave. He also did not indicate when she would return to work.

Another high-profile case the jurist has overseen of late includes the murder trial of a man, AJ Armstrong, convicted of shooting dead his parents when he was a teen in 2016. After two mistrials, Armstrong was convicted in August.

In the wake of Johnson’s absence, some of her cases and hearings have been handled by a visiting judge. A retired judge, Jim Wallace, stepped up last week to preside over a trial.

The administrative judge for the area, Judge Susan Brown, has refused to say whether there’s a timeline for Johnson’s return to the bench.

Johnson was elected to the court in 2016 after serving as assistant district attorney for 17 years, according to her bio.

She is the first openly gay female judge to be elected in Harris County. She has two sons, a 12-year-old and a 10-month-old, with her wife Hilary Bartlett.

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