Judge Smith was born in New Orleans on April 7, 1937 and grew up in Washington, D.C. A graduate of Yale Law School in 1962, Judge Smith started his legal career as a staff attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, trying civil rights and demonstration cases in the South. He then served as a law secretary in the New York State courts to Civil Court Judge Jawn Sandifer, Supreme Court Justice Edward Dudley, and Presiding Justice Harold Stevens of the Appellate Division, First Department. He also served as Administrator of Model Cities for the City of New York.

Judge Smith’s judicial service began in May 1975 when he was appointed to an interim term on the New York City Civil Court. In November 1975, he was elected to a 10-year term on the Civil Court. While a member of that court, he received temporary assignments to the New York State Family Court and the New York City Criminal Court. Judge Smith was subsequently elected to a 14-year term on the New York State Supreme Court in November 1979, where he served for six years. In January 1987, he was appointed by Governor Mario Cuomo as an Associate Justice of the State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department, where he served until September 1992. While an Associate Justice, he was appointed a Commissioner of the New York State Ethics Commission for the Unified Court System by the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals and was subsequently reappointed to five-year terms in 1991 and 1996. In 1992, Governor Cuomo appointed him to the Court of Appeals, where he served for 14 years before retiring in September 2006.

Throughout his career, Judge Smith has been active in numerous legal, educational, and community endeavors. He played a lead role in forming the Metropolitan Black Bar Association, serving as its first chairman of the board and currently as a member of its board of directors. He is a former president of the Harlem Lawyers Association, which merged with the Bedford-Stuyvesant Lawyers Association to form the Metropolitan Black Bar Association. He is a member of several other bar associations, including the New York City Bar for which he served as a former vice president. He is also a member of the Judicial Friends.

Judge Smith has been a long-time member of the adjunct faculty at Fordham University Law School. He has also authored several legal publications covering a wide range of subjects, including one with his wife, Dr. Alene L. Smith, You Decide! Applying the Bill of Rights to Real Cases, a text for high school students. He is chairman of the board of trustees of Grace Congregational Church in Harlem; a former trustee of the Horace Mann-Barnard School in the Bronx; a member of the board of directors of Harlem Dowling-Westside Center for Children and Family Services in New York; and a former alumni trustee of Phillips Academy.

He has received numerous awards for his work, among them the inaugural Hon. George Bundy Smith Award from the New York State Bar Association’s Commercial and Federal Litigation Section and the Hon. William Brennan Award for Outstanding Jurist by the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He received the first Lifetime Public Service Award from the Fund for Modern Courts, which strives to improve the administration and quality of justice in New York State. He also received a 2008 Spirit of Excellence Award from the American Bar Association’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession.

In addition to his law degree from Yale, he received a B.A. from Yale University in 1959. While spending his junior year in France, he earned a Certificate of Political Studies in 1958 from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris. He holds a master’s degree in political science and a Ph.D. in government from New York University, awarded in 1967 and 1974, respectively. He also holds a master’s degree in the judicial process from the University of Virginia School of Law – Graduate Program for Judges. Judge Smith was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1963 and the District of Columbia Bar in 1980.

Judge Smith resides in Manhattan with his wife. They have two children, George, Jr. and Beth Beatrice.