'Next time in your office': Court testimony details alleged sexual relationship between Oklahoma judge, bailiff before resignation
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — ‘Health concerns’ were the sole reason Garfield County Judge Brian Lovell gave for his resignation when he submitted it to Governor Stitt on Monday, exactly one year to the day after he allegedly had sex with a court bailiff – inside the very courthouse they both worked.
Garfield County Associate District Judge Lovell submitted his resignation letter to Governor Kevin Stitt on Monday, citing a recent dementia diagnosis.
His resignation comes several weeks after Chief Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice John Kane recommended Lovell be removed from the bench, after a judicial complaint alleged he wrongfully sealed case records and had a weeks-long sexual relationship with a bailiff who worked under the judge who presided over the case.
Lovell was also previously indicted for a road rage shooting in Austin, Texas, and for a drive-by shooting at his brother-in-law’s home in Bison, Oklahoma. Prosecutors said shell casings connected Lovell to both shootings.
As first reported by the Enid News & Eagle, Lovell sent a letter to Governor Stitt, announcing his immediate resignation on Monday. In the letter, he specifies that the decision to resign comes solely as a result of his recent dementia diagnosis.
According to an August 13 court filing from Chief Justice Kane, the State of Oklahoma’s Council on Judicial Complaints received a complaint alleging Lovell ordered records for a recent case heard by Garfield County Judge Paul Woodward to be sealed.
According to court documents, the complaint was filed by a person associated with the victim in the case.
In his filing recommending Lovell be removed from the bench, Chief Justice Kane alleged Lovell never consulted state attorneys in that case before ordering the records be sealed, and only communicated with the defense attorney.
The court filing included pictures of text messages Lovell sent back and forth with the defense attorney.
In the texts, Lovell falsely claimed Judge Woodward had filed the judicial complaint against him.
Court documents revealed Lovell also made similar false claims to the bailiff who worked for Woodward and managed his digital records system.
The filing identified that bailiff as Cynthia “Cindy” Tubbs.
Chief Justice Kane’s filing included a transcript of sworn testimony Tubbs gave investigators looking into the complaint against Lovell.
Investigators asked Tubbs if Lovell ever told her Woodward was the person who filed the complaint against him.
“Correct,” Tubbs responded.
But Tubbs also told investigators much, much more.
She told them she’d had a sexual relationship with Lovell beginning in August 2023.
She said it started with text messages.
“Flirting from both sides,” she told investigators.
But she said the affair quickly progressed.
“We made out one time in Judge Woodward’s bathroom,” she told investigators. “I wouldn’t say we had full on sex. Third base, I don’t know.”
Investigators uncovered some text messages sent between Tubbs and Lovell.
On Sept. 8 last year, Lovell texted Tubbs: “You have no idea how many times I think about the backseat of my car and the judge’s bathroom.”
Later that day, he texted Tubbs again, asking to see some partially-nude “boudoir” pictures she’d taken of herself.
“I was going to show you one, but I would show it to you not send it,” Tubbs texted back to Lovell.
“Deal,” Lovell texted Tubbs in response—allegedly while presiding over a case in his courtroom. “Let me do this plea and I will try to cash in on that promise.”
Tubbs told investigators “he came over to my office,” where she showed him those naked pictures, and the two kissed.
“That kiss was amazing” she texted him after the alleged encounter.
Then investigators asked her: “Did you ever have any sexual relationship with Judge Lovell on some new table that you purchased for your office?”
“That would have been on the September 9th date, yes,” Tubbs responded. “I was really proud of that table.”
Two days later, on Sept. 11, the same day he was arrested in Texas in connection to a drive-by shooting, Lovell texted Tubbs: “Next time in your office.”
But Tubbs told investigators there would be no next time, that the affair ended with his arrest in Texas.
In a previous filing in response to the complaint, Lovell’s lawyers claimed “there was no sexual conduct” between Lovell and Tubbs and that the relationship was “limited to flirtatious texting.”
His lawyers went on, arguing, even if he did have the affair, it shouldn’t matter.
They mentioned former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, arguing Clinton was allowed to remain in office after his affair with Monica Lewinsky became public, and that Trump was elected president in 2016 despite “wide knowledge the public had” of comments he made about grabbing women inappropriately.
“Judge Lovell could run for reelection today,” Lovell’s lawyers wrote. ”And if he did, he would win.”
Chief Justice Kane responded, saying Lovell and his attorneys had clearly been “untruthful” in their claims that the affair did not go beyond flirtatious text messages, given what was revealed in Tubbs’ sworn testimony.
Lovell and his lawyers responded to that, claiming Lovell “will seek a medical retirement and not return to the bench” after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer and dementia.
On Monday, his lawyers sent his resignation letter to Governor Stitt.
They wrote Lovell wanted to “make it unequivocally clear that his resignation is motivated by considerations of his health only.”