Hugh Bond was born on December 16, 1828, in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, the son of Christina (Birckhead) Bond and Dr. Thomas E. Bond, a physician and clergyman, one of the founders of the city's first medical school, and at one time editor of the Christian Advocate.
In early childhood Hugh Bond was taken to New York, where he lived until he graduated from the University of the City of New York in 1848. He returned to Baltimore to read law, and was admitted to the bar in 1851.
In 1860 Hugh Bond was appointed by Gov. Thomas H. Hicks as judge of the criminal court, in 1861 he was elected to the same position. He was a valuable addition to the American Party in the conservative state of Maryland. Less radical than Henry Winter Davis, he was no less loyal to the Union. The attack of April 19, 1861, on the 6th Massachusetts Regiment on its way through Baltimore gave him the first opportunity to exercise a fearless sense of right which was characteristic. According to his charge to the grand jury, those who took part in the riot had been guilty of murder. Other decisions during the war were his release on habeas corpus writs of seventy-five Unionists who had been arrested for displaying flags; his committal to jail of police commissioners appointed by Gov. Swann; his charge to the grand jury to indict military commissioners appointed by the national government who tried citizens for offenses against the United States when Maryland was not under military law; his release on habeas corpus writs of children of free colored people apprenticed to slaveholders under an old law.
At the same time Bond had active political and humanitarian interests. He was a supporter of Davis and when the latter's election to Congress was in doubt in October 1863, he wrote Secretary Stanton about the possibility of postponing the draft until the canvas's of votes could be completed. His protest gave an impetus to the support of emancipation by the non-slaveholding whites in Maryland through the resulting levy of slaves which released the whites. Rearrangement of the courts by the new state constitution of 1867 automatically retired Judge Bond from the criminal court bench and he took up private practise.
In 1870 President Grant appointed Bond judge of the newly created fourth United States circuit court, including Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the Carolinas. The Senate confirmed his appointment by a majority of four votes. Almost immediately he was called upon to hear the Ku Klux cases of South Carolina. His independence of judgment was conspicuous here. Fines and imprisonment which he imposed broke the reign of terror that had held nine counties of the state helpless. Five years later Bond gave the famous decision which made Hayes President of the United States when he released on habeas corpus writs the members of the state board of canvassers of South Carolina who had been illegally imprisoned by order of the South Carolina supreme court in the effort to force the electoral vote of the state for Tilden. For almost twenty-five years more he was an active and valuable judge in the fourth United States circuit. Many important civil and criminal cases were heard by him, among which the Virginia Coupon cases of 1886, the receivership and sale of the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad, and the Navassa Island murder case were conspicuous.
Impelled by a warm interest in the negro, Hug Bond started and later helped support an educational plan nicknamed "Timbuctoo, " which developed into the Association for the Improvement of Colored People. In 1868 schools for colored children were established in Baltimore through the efforts of this organization.
Hugh Bond married in 1853 Anne Griffith Penniman of Baltimore.
