Francis Patrick O'Connor

Who was Francis Patrick O'Connor?

Francis Patrick O'Connor was an associate judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Born in Boston on Dec. 12, 1927, son of Thomas Lane and Florence Mary O'Connor, he was raised in Belmont and lived briefly in Medford and Grafton before settling in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts in 1962. He attended Belmont public schools and graduated from Boston College High School in 1945. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1950, after serving two years in the U.S. Army in the occupation of Korea following World War II. In 1953, he graduated from Boston College Law School and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar, and later to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the U.S. Court of Appeals.

He served as law clerk to the Honorable Raymond S. Wilkins, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, from 1953 to 1954. From 1954 to 1976, Justice O'Connor practiced law at Friedman, Atherton, Sisson & Kozol in Boston, and Mason, Crotty, Dunn & O'Connor and Wolfson, Moynihan, Dodson & O'Connor in Worcester. Prior to his tenure on the bench, he served as a member of the SJC Advisory Committee on the Rules of Civil Procedure and the SJC's Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee.