Atlanta attorney Thomas Sampson on Monday called the death of U.S. District Judge Horace Ward “a devastating blow.”

Ward, the first African-American appointed to a federal judgeship in Georgia, “is clearly one of the giants in this field of civil rights,” said Sampson, a partner at Thomas Kennedy Sampson & Tompkins. “He fought all his life for the civil rights of others. … He was a true legal trailblazer within our legal profession.”