BANGOR (AP) – James P. Archibald, a Houlton native whose nearly half century as a Maine judge included service on the state supreme court bench, died at his winter home in New Smyrna Beach, Fla. Archibald was 94.

Archibald is also remembered as a gentleman who treated everyone who came before his court with the same respect.

“He was always very relaxed and accommodating, a very nice man,” said Aroostook County District Attorney Neale Adams, who recalled the first time he approached the supreme court bench in the early 1070s. Archibald “took some of the fear of being a young lawyer right out of you.”

Archibald, the son of Houlton lawyer Bernard Archibald, attended Bowdoin College and the Boston University School of Law before returning to Houlton in 1937.

He worked in his father’s law firm and was elected Aroostook County attorney in 1941, and after military service during World War II was re-elected to the post.

He was appointed to the Superior Court bench in 1957 by Gov. Edmund Muskie. Archibald served as one of eight Superior Court justices until Gov. Kenneth Curtis appointed him to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 1971. He became an active retired justice in 1981.

In an interview with the Bangor Daily News in 1996, Archibald said he had “made my share of mistakes.”

“And any judge that says differently about himself is completely off the wall,” said Archibald. “We’re all human beings sitting up there. But as long as others consider me to have been a fair judge, what more can I ask?”

Archibald died Sunday. Funeral arrangements were pending Tuesday.