News » SCOTUS Justices Take Orders From One Man: Their Personal Trainer

SCOTUS Justices Take Orders From One Man: Their Personal Trainer

February 28, 2017

barbell, weightlifting

Bryant Johnson works as a staffer in the clerk’s office of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and serves as an Army reservist. In his spare time, he works as a personal trainer. His clients? Nearly half of the highest court in the United States, and a handful of appellate justices to boot. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan all enlist Johnson to keep their bodies as fit as their minds. Ginsburg, whose personal workouts are the stuff of legend (and whose personal health has been a key concern for liberals since November), told Politico that after the death of her husband, and then her close friend Justice Antonin Scalia, Johnson is the most important person in her life. Johnson was certified as a personal trainer in 1997, and began training judges, deputy U.S. marshals, and other court personnel at the facility inside the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse, which houses Washington’s district court, appeals court and the U.S. FISA Court. He calls his company “Body Justice.” Ginsburg began seeing Johnson in 1999, after recovering from colon cancer. “Johnson’s niche makes him perhaps the world’s only personal trainer whose job it is to ensure that his clients keep riding the bench,” Politico’s Ben Schreckinger writes. Schreckinger replicated Ginsburg’s personal workout with Johnson and video-taped the entire thing, writing that afterwards, “Sore, disoriented and cranky, I didn’t feel a day over 65.”

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