Brendan Byrne

Two-term New Jersey Gov. Brendan Byrne, celebrated for his accomplishments as executive but equally influential as a lawyer and mentor, is being remembered as steadfastly ethical and courageous by fellow practitioners, including those who once worked with him in the Essex County Prosecutor's Office. He died Thursday at age 93.

Byrne had a reputation for ethical behavior, perhaps first earned when an organized crime figure, Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo, was caught on tape saying—now famously—that Byrne couldn't be bribed.

But other, unheralded examples of his integrity abounded, it seems.