GALLANT

Eugene G. Gallant, who served as a state Superior Court judge for almost 30 years, died Monday at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston. The retired jurist, who was 87, died while being operated on for an infection that developed several weeks after having knee-replacement surgery at the Boston hospital, one of his closest friends, Senior U.S. District Judge Ronald R. Lagueux, said yesterday.

He was the husband of the late Etta (Champagne) Gallant and the son of the late Phileas Edmund and Catherine (Bradley) Gallant.

Gallant, a soft-spoken, deliberative jurist who presided over several high-profile criminal and civil trials, served on the Superior Court from 1968 to 1987. After the death of his wife in 1988, he continued in retirement to sit part-time on the bench.

Gallant, who began his judicial career in Pawtucket where he sat as a District Court clerk and acting judge for 10 years, was named to the Superior Court bench by Gov. John H. Chafee. He replaced Frank Licht, who resigned from the bench to run for governor.

Born May 8, 1920, in Pawtucket, Gallant attended St. Joseph’s Grammar School and St. Raphael Academy. He didn’t have enough money to go to college right after high school so he went to work as a patternmaker at Brown & Sharpe from 1939 until 1943, when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps as a flying cadet.

When he was released from active duty in 1947, he entered Brown University on the G.I. Bill and graduated cum laude in 1950. He later earned a law degree from Harvard Law School.

In 1955, Gov. Dennis J. Roberts named Gallant executive counsel, a post he held until 1958, when Roberts appointed him clerk and acting judge of the District Court in Pawtucket. Under the state district court structure at that time, he was also able to maintain a private law practice. Gallant met his wife while working in Roberts’ State House office where she worked as a secretary.

In 1966, he mounted a strong, although unsuccessful, challenge to Rep. Fernand J. St Germain for the Democratic congressional nomination.

Gallant served in the Air Force Reserve when he left active duty and became an officer when the Rhode Island Air National Guard was formed in 1948. He rose through the ranks to command of the 143rd Air Commando Group, a unit of more than 500 men. He retired from the Air National Guard in 1980 with the rank of major general.

He was the first chairman of the Neighborhood Legal Services Committee, formed in 1966 to extend legal services to the poor through the antipoverty program and more recently, served on the board of McAuley House, in Providence, which helps the homeless.

While on the Superior Court, Gallant presided in a 1971 case which at the time set records for the state’s longest jury trial, longest jury deliberation and, it was believed, largest award of damages by a state jury. After 23 weeks and 103 actual trial days and 6 days of deliberation, a jury awarded $4.3 million to Atlantic Tubing and Rubber Co. of Cranston and affiliated firms, in settlement of insurance claims (contested by insurance companies) from a 1968 fire and explosion.

He also presided over a constitutional challenge to the 1982 House reapportionment plan and over a gamut of criminal cases involving high-profile defendants, including the late New England mob boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca, and Marvin Barnes, the Providence College basketball star who stood trial for assaulting a teammate with a tire iron. While sitting as a retired justice, Gallant sentenced former Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation president Peter A. Nevola and Steven R. Salvatore, president and treasurer of the now-defunct Jefferson Loan and Investment Bank of Cranston, to serve one year in prison for charges related to the state’s 1991 banking crisis.

According to state prosecutors, in 1981, Gallant became the target of an assassination plot hatched by a criminal defendant who was unhappy with some of Gallant’s rulings in a criminal case. But Ralph DeMasi, the man charged with plotting to kill the judge, was acquitted at trial.

During his judicial career, Gallant was twice a finalist for a seat on the Rhode Island Supreme Court. Most recently, he served on a committee created by Governor Carcieri to investigate the July 2003 state police raid on the Narragansett Indians’ smoke shop.

Lagueux, who served for many years with Gallant on the Superior Court, yesterday called his longtime friend “a classic American success story…He was an officer and a gentleman and an excellent judge. He had a wonderful temperament and was a great listener. He was very deliberative and very thoughtful about every decision he made.”

Gallant divided his time in retirement between his house on the East Side of Providence and a condominium he owned in West Palm Beach, Fla. Lagueux said Gallant traveled extensively around the world in the last several years and up until his recent knee surgery, enjoyed taking long walks.

Gallant is survived by two sons, who are both lawyers, Paul F. Gallant, of Arlington, Va., and Eugene G. Gallant Jr., an American Airlines pilot who recently completed a two-year tour of active duty with the Air National Guard in the Middle East. A third son, Peter D. Gallant, died in 2004. He is also survived by four grandchildren.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held Saturday at 10 a.m. in the Church of St. Sebastian, Cole Avenue, Providence.

tbreton@projo.com