Brown Jr. named him state justice secretary, making him the first African-American to hold a cabinet-level post in Kentucky.
However, he resigned a month later, saying that the position would force him to spend too much time away from his family; Brown immediately reappointed him to his former seat on the District Court.
[3] In 1990, he left the bench for private practice, but was re-elected to the Jefferson County Circuit Court in 1993 as chief judge.
[5] The Kentucky Trial Attorneys Association named McAnulty as the Henry V. Pennington Outstanding Judge of the Year in 1997.
"[1] He maintained a sense of humor during his illness; before surgery on July 11 to remove a lesion from the base of his brain, he joked with the attending neurosurgeon, "My only question was will this make me a UK fan or affect my political outlook.