John Jefferson Bray

John Jefferson Bray, AC QC (16 September 1912 – 26 June 1995) was an Australian lawyer, judge, academic, university administrator, Crown officer, and poet.

[1] He was acting lecturer in jurisprudence at the University of Adelaide for the years 1941, 1943, 1945 (due to his being medically unfit to serve in World War II owing to extremely poor eyesight[1]), and in 1951.

He was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia on 28 February 1967 and served until his retirement from the judiciary on 28 November 1978.

[1] Bray was appointed Chancellor of the University of Adelaide in 1968, and also served as Deputy to the Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia from 1968 until retirement.

He described his views as "æsthetic - traditional; social - emancipated; political - fluctuating" and his philosophies as "sceptical, some tendencies to Platonism".

[1] There is a bronze bust of Bray, sculpted by local sculptor John Dowie, in the State Library.

"Address to the pigeons in Hurtle Square", a poem by Bray, features on the western face of the John Jefferson Bray Memorial Fountain in Hurtle Square, Adelaide , where he once lived.