John G. Davies (born 17 May 1929 in Willoughby, New South Wales) was an Australian breaststroke swimmer of the 1940s and 1950s who won a gold medal in the 200m breaststroke at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. After retiring from swimming, he became a prominent lawyer in California, and after becoming a naturalized American, he was appointed a judge of the United States District Court by Ronald Reagan in 1986, and presided over the trial of t...
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John G. Davies (born 17 May 1929 in Willoughby, New South Wales) was an Australian breaststroke swimmer of the 1940s and 1950s who won a gold medal in the 200m breaststroke at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. After retiring from swimming, he became a prominent lawyer in California, and after becoming a naturalized American, he was appointed a judge of the United States District Court by Ronald Reagan in 1986, and presided over the trial of the Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with assaulting Rodney King.
Growing up in Willoughby, Sydney, where his father was an accountant and his mother a nurse, Davies learnt to swim at the tidal pool in Northbridge, where he enjoyed competing against his friends. He and his brother spent their teenage years separated from their father, who joined the Royal Australian Air Force and was a Japanese prisoner of war for three years. Davies left Narrabeen High School in 1945 and worked for the Caltex oil company, who often granted him...
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