She ruled in favor of former Gambian President Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara’s nephew who arrived in the U.S as a Gambian refugee. In stating her opinion she castigated the magistrate who had questioned Jawara nephew’s application for asylum. The magistrate was later removed. That was Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal judge in New Jersey, who died Monday, aged 86.

Maryanne Trump Barry was an older sister to U.S twice impeached former President Donald J. Trump. She served as both his protector and critic throughout their lives, as secret audio recordings revealed in 2019, she could also be scathingly critical of him. She died at her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Two people closed to the deceased said the police were called to the home early Monday morning. None of the people specified a cause, and all spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Judge Barry had been on the federal bench in New Jersey, a position that Mr. Trump’s fixer, the lawyer Roy M. Cohn, was credited with helping her attain during President Ronald Reagan’s tenure in the 1980s. She retired in 2019 after she became the focus of a court investigation stemming from an investigation by The New York Times into the Trump family’s tax practices.

Mr. Trump seemed to heed the words of few people as much as he did his eldest sister’s, according to confidants. But their relationship suffered a significant fissure in the final year of his presidency, when their niece Mary L. Trump, who was promoting a memoir about their family, released recordings of her aunt speaking harshly about Donald Trump.

A Republican, Judge Barry was appointed to the District Court in New Jersey by President Reagan in 1983 and to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit by President Bill Clinton in 1993. She was the widow of John J. Barry, a veteran trial and appellate lawyer in New Jersey.

She stepped down from the bench after The Times found that the Trumps had engaged in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s to increase the inherited wealth of Mr. Trump and his siblings. Judge Barry not only benefited financially from most of these schemes, The Times found; she was also in a position to influence the actions taken by her family.

At the time, she had been listed as an inactive-senior judge for two years. Her retirement mooted the court investigation, since retired judges are not subject to judicial conduct rules.

She was regarded as a tough judge. Judge Barry rejected a plea bargain that would have freed two detectives accused of protecting a drug dealer; they were tried and convicted.

As tough as she was on the bench, Judge Barry suggested that women lighten up just a bit on the issue of sexual harassment.