The federal judge overseeing the liquidation of Bernard Madoff’s collapsed investment firm was arrested for smacking his wife around in their Park Avenue apartment, sources said yesterday.
Bankruptcy Judge James Peck, 63, was charged with attempted second-degree assault and harassment following a Saturday-afternoon tiff with his wife, Judith, 64.
Peck, who’s also handling the massive bankruptcy of failed Wall Street giant Lehman Bros., was released on his own recognizance.
“We’ve been married 42 years,” the judge told cops who arrived at the tony building following a 911 call by Judith Peck, according to the sources.
“We love each other very much. I have never hit her before. This was not about tonight.”
Judith Peck, who complained of pain and suffered some bruising to the jaw, was taken to New York Presbyterian Hospital for evaluation.
Neither the judge nor his wife answered a message left for them at the front desk of their building.
Cops arrived to find Peck and his wife in separate rooms, the sources said.
Peck allegedly told police that the blowup began over his wife’s late arrival at the house from the Hamptons, where she’d been earlier in the week.
Peck said his wife slapped him first, as he was taking a ladder out of his closet.
“She slapped me,” the judge told police, according to the sources. “I put the ladder down. I slapped her. Then we started slapping each other back and forth.”
Remorse apparently set in quickly for Peck, when he told cops, “I will never do it again. We need to go to counseling.”
Peck was appointed to the federal bench in 2006.