Judi Jane Conway Patton (born 1940 in Pikeville, Kentucky, US)[1] is an American activist for women's safety and child abuse prevention.

Roy Conway was a businessman and former state legislator who had been elected as sheriff "on a platform to clean out bootleggers and stop corruption that spoiled the reputation of our beautiful mountain town".

[3][4] Esta Conway was originally from the Craft and Wright families of Letcher County, Kentucky and attended Morehead State Teacher's College.

After her father's death, the Conway family opened a small grocery store, where the children were expected to work part-time.

While in office in Frankfort, Kentucky, she pushed "20 bills that strengthened protections for children, domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, created policy standards for prosecuting perpetrators and expanded training initiatives from local law enforcement to judges, doctors and nurses.

In 1996 Patton received from Janet Reno the federal government's allotted grant funding for the Commonwealth to address the needs of domestic violence and sexual assault victims.

In 1998 Vice President Al Gore presented to Patton a special "full faith and credit" grant of nearly $3 million from the STOP Violence Against Women program[8] from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Governor Patton had formed a task force in November 2001 after a national survey ranked Kentucky as the third worst state for women.