In a bowling alley, ex-convict Carl Nearman (J. R. Bourne) watches another man eat his meal before following him outside, where he approaches and kills him.

The Millennium Group sends profiler Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) and pathologist Cheryl Andrews (C. C. H. Pounder) to investigate, as several people have received body parts in the mail.

Mike Bardale (John Hawkes), a violent repeat offender who has recently been released from prison again, is approached by a man calling himself The Judge (Marshall Bell).

The Judge, a vigilante, offers Bardale a position in his "court", in which convicts are hired to mete out his version of justice against those he perceives as criminals.

"The Judge" is the first of four episodes of Millennium to be written by Ted Mann, who would go on to write "Loin Like a Hunting Flame", "Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions" and the first-season finale "Paper Dove".

"The Judge" was first broadcast on the Fox Network on November 15, 1996;[11] and earned a Nielsen rating of 7.6, meaning that roughly 7.6 percent of all television-equipped households were tuned in to the episode.

Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode one star out of five, finding its "contrived" plot to be "barely a subtle premise", and noting that "the script unfortunately elevates the lead villain to high camp".

Club, Emily Todd VanDerWerff rated the episode a B−, praising the acting of both Bell and John Hawkes.

However, VanDerWerff felt that "The Judge" showed Millennium to be struggling with its own concept, growing "staid" as a result of only having "the one color to play with".