Gordon Martin served as a Massachusetts trial judge for 21 years before retiring. During the Kennedy Administration he was one of a dozen lawyers working on the Deep South voting and intimidation cases for the Civil Rights Division of Robert Kennedy's Justice Department. In that capacity, he prepared United States v. Theron Lynd, the first of the Department's voting rights cases to bring a Mississippi Registrar of Voters to trial. Martin also investigated hunger in the Mississippi Delta and discrimination on southern air bases.

Upon returning to Massachusetts, he was First Assistant United States Attorney and later Special Assistant to Senator Edward M. Kennedy and a Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission against Discrimination, one of the three oldest state anti-discrimination agencies. In 2000 Martin was Visiting Professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law, teaching Civil Rights and Legal Ethics. He is an adjunct professor at New England Law Boston, where he teaches Civil Rights and Community Courts. Martin has co-authored a civil rights casebook and written more than thirty chapters, articles and op-ed pieces.

His book, Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote, about the witnesses and others involved in the Lynd case, was published by the University Press of Mississippi in November 2010. Martin was one of the Civil Rights Division lawyers of the 1960s honored with the 2009 Humanitarian Award of the Choral Arts Society of Washington at its Annual Tribute to Dr. King.

Martin is a graduate of Roxbury Latin, Harvard College and New York University School of Law and lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife Stephanie. They have four adult children.

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