Judy Walton has worked 25 years at the Chattanooga Times and the Times Free Press as an editor and reporter focusing on government coverage and investigations.
At various times she has been an assistant metro editor, region reporter and editor, county government reporter, government-beat team leader, features editor and page designer.
Originally from California, Walton was brought up in a military family and attended a dozen schools across the country. She earned a journalism degree from Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Ky., in 1984 and worked at two Kentucky newspapers before moving to Chattanooga in 1987.
Her investigative pieces include allegations of medical malpractice at Chattanooga’s Veterans Affairs clinic — stories that led to a federal investigation and a series of reforms. She was the first to report on massive ground and water pollution at the former Volunteer Army Ammunition Depot (now the VW assembly plant); during the first year of her stories on the quality and timetable for repairing the damage, federal government funding for cleanup tripled. More recently, she and colleague Cliff Hightower reported on financial irregularities at the Tennessee Multicultural Chamber of Commerce, which led Chattanooga and Hamilton County governments to withdraw funding for the organization.
Recent Stories »
A Riceville, Tenn., man is believed to have shot his elderly aunt to death Tuesday before turning the gun on himself.
The Georgia state Senate approved a resolution on Monday to cap the state's income tax at its current rate.
Members of a state House committee that followed up last year on a TBI investigation of 10th Judicial District Attorney Steve Bebb expected legislative charges against Bebb and possible removal when the General Assembly convened in January.
A McMinn County businessman who drugged teenage girls and photographed them in sexual poses texted one such picture to the county's chief deputy, who was in training at the FBI Academy at the time, sources close to the investigation confirm.
People with second-shift jobs on Manufacturers Road on the North Shore need to be planning alternate routes.
An area lawmaker says Tennessee police officers shouldn't be helping federal contractors hold roadblocks where they ask motorists for cheek swabs and blood samples as part of a national drunken- and drugged-driving survey.
Some insiders are supporting the outsider in the Republican campaign for district attorney in Bradley and neighboring counties.
A suspect in a fatal shooting Saturday in Hixson is in custody.
For months, northbound drivers leaving U.S. Highway 27 have had to navigate a temporary exit with a short ramp and a tight curve to get onto Signal Mountain Road.
The campaign for Bradley County sheriff has gone negative before it’s even official.
