Thomas was born on August 23, 1868 in South Boston, Massachussets, United States, to Thomas and Mary (Donahue) Judge, who were both Irish-born, and received his early education in the public grade and high schools. On the death of his father the family responsibility was his, and he found employment to support his relatives.
When he was of age he enrolled in the preparatory department of St. Vincent's Seminary at Germantown, as a student for the priesthood.
Initially Judge worked in a brass shop, which manufactured dental tools. Later, he entered the novitiate of the Congregation of the Mission (Vincentian Fathers); on January 25, 1895, he pronounced his holy vows; and on completion of his philosophical and theological studies he was ordained a Catholic priest, May 27, 1899, by Archbishop Patrick J. Ryan of Philadelphia. A lung infection almost prevented his ordination and made it necessary to assign light duties, first as a teacher in the Internal Seminary and later as a curate in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and at St. Vincent de Paul's Church in Germantown.
After several years' traveling up and down the Atlantic coast, he was ordered to parish duties at St. John's Church, Brooklyn. Here in 1900 he inspired six women to become lay apostles for the preservation of the faith - the humble beginning of the Outer Missionary Cenacle, the membership of which increased in time to one thousand or more persons, principally in Brooklyn and Philadelphia. Transferred to St. Vincent's Mission, Springfield, Massachussets, he intensified his interest in the lay apostolate. His activities aroused criticism as radical, and he was transferred to the superiorship of the Vincentian Mission House at Opelika, Alabama. (1915).
Seeing in the South an opportunity to use his lay disciples, he invited them to give a few years to the service of the Catholic Church in this neglected area. In 1920 he was permitted by his superior-general in Paris to live apart from the Vincentian community in order to devote himself to his own foundations: Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity (priests and brothers), and Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity (nuns) with Mother Boniface Keasey as first superioress. These communities were recognized by Bishop Edward P. Allen of Mobile in 1924 and approved for canonical erection by Rome (1929, 1932) "for the preservation of the Faith on our abandoned Home Missions. "
Chronic pleurisy, ecclesiastical criticism, financial burdens, and concern over his status as a Vincentian and a Missionary Servant, sapped his strength and he died after a brief illness at Providence Hospital, Washington.
Thomas Augustine Judge was famous as the missionary of Catholic Church. He opened a school in Phoenix City, Alabama, to care for non-Catholic children. His pioneer congregations prospered and came to include a preparatory seminary at Holy Trinity, Alabama, a House of Studies at Silver Spring, Maryland, eight missionary cenacles in four dioceses, twenty-one ordained priests and a hundred seminarians and brothers, a hospital at Gadsden, Alabama, two schools in Puerto Rico, and a hospice for women at the University of Puerto Rico.
Thomas Judge was especially interested in the lay apostolate for both men and women, the Holy Name Society, and the Arch-Confraternity of the Holy Agony.
Thomas was a dynamic speaker and a tense, arduous worker.
A man of deep faith, sincerity, determination, and selfless love for the poor and the Negro, he labored in poverty, facing sharp criticism of his methods, especially those employed in collecting funds, since he depended more on providence than on sound economics.
