Joseph Samuel Perry

Joseph Samuel Perry (November 30, 1896 – February 18, 1984) was a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Born in Carbon Hill, Alabama, Perry was the son of a coal miner named Jack Perry, and Mary Elizabeth Brown. He worked on local farms and in area coal mines before joining the U.S. Navy and serving in Europe during World War I. After the war, he returned home to finish high school. Perry then earned a bachelor's degree Phi Beta Kappa in 1923 from the University of Alabama and a master's degree from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration in 1925. He earned a law degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1927.

Perry worked in private law practice in Chicago from 1928 until 1933, when he began working as a master in chancery in DuPage County, Illinois and as a private lawyer in Wheaton, Illinois. In 1936, Perry was elected to the Illinois Senate as a Democrat from the 41st district. He served from 1937 until 1943 and served as a floor leader for Governor Henry Horner. In 1943, Perry returned to private law practice in Wheaton. He was the last Democrat from DuPage County to serve in the Illinois Senate until Tom Cullerton of Villa Park seventy years later. After World War II, Perry was unsuccessful in efforts to be elected as a state senator and a congressman, largely because he was a Democrat in heavily Republican DuPage County. Perry remained a lawyer in Wheaton until he became a federal judge in 1951. Perry also worked from 1949 until 1951 as DuPage County's public administrator.

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