John Joseph “Jack” Bishop Jr. was born in 1929, the son of a railroader and homemaker, in Baltimore and raised in the 10th Ward, the lower Greenmount Avenue neighborhood. After graduating from Mount St. Joseph High School in 1947, he worked as a B&O clerk at Camden and as an office boy at Fidelity & Deposit Co. from 1947 to 1948 where he became an insurance adjuster for the National Mutual Insurance Co.

Bishop received his law degree in 1951 from the University of Baltimore and continued to work as an insurance adjuster until he was admitted to the bar in 1954. From 1954 to 1955, Judge Bishop practiced law from an office on the 300 block of E. North Ave and then moved to Towson where he opened a general law practice on West Chesapeake Avenue. In 1966, Bishop began his legislative career when he was elected to the old 4th District of Baltimore County. He was given the nickname of “Landslide Jack” when he won two Senate elections by a combined 800 votes out of 60,000. He served on the Economics Affairs Committee and in 1971 moved to the Judicial Proceedings Committee. He was also heavily involved in fighting for the rights of those with intellectual disabilities and for many years participated in the annual March of Dimes Walk-a-Thon as well as other health related organizations.

In 1981, Bishop retired from the Senate and was elected to the Court of Special Appeals where he felt the “real law (was) being made in the state…”. In addition to serving on the court, he was a guest lecturer at University of Maryland School of Law during the 1980s. He served until his retirement in 1996 and continued to contribute opinions at special request until 2004.

Bishop passed in 2011 at the age of 83 from Alzheimer’s disease complications.

(text adapted from https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2011-06-09-bs-md-ob-john-bishop-20110609-story.html)