A special judicial panel in Philadelphia has admonished a prominent federal judge in San Francisco for storing pornographic images that were accessible to the public on a personal Web site.

The panel said yesterday that Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, was imprudent for storing the sexually explicit material on a home computer server that could be viewed by the public.

However, it did not criticize Kozinski for having the material, nor did it impose any penalties. Kozinski's attorney could not be reached for comment yesterday.

"Once the judge became aware in 2007 that offensive material could be accessed by members of the public, his inattention to the need for prompt corrective action amounted to a disregard of serious risk of public embarrassment," said the opinion by Anthony J. Scirica, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, who headed the panel.

The issue emerged in 2007 when the Los Angeles Times reported that Kozinski had maintained a Web site containing various pornographic pictures and videos including images of a partially dressed man cavorting with farm animals that could be viewed by Internet users.

Kozinski, who was presiding over an obscenity trial at the time, asked for a judicial investigation, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. transferred the matter to the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. Dechert L.L.P. lawyer Robert Heim and J. Gordon Cooney Jr. of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius L.L.P., assisted in the investigation. Both firms are based in Philadelphia.

The probe, which included three hours of sworn testimony from Kozinski, concluded that he had stored the images for a time in folders on a family server that also had been used to store family photos and other personal data.

He occasionally used the site to post materials for law school classes that he taught and for a judicial conference, and believed that the pornographic images had been shielded from public access.

The panel said that the Los Angeles Times was alerted to the Web site by a Beverly Hills lawyer named Cyrus Sanai, a longtime critic of Kozinski and other Ninth Circuit judges. Sanai had accused the judges of misconduct in connection with litigation involving his family.

Kozinski, who was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, has a reputation as a libertarian, and apparently cultivates an image as something of a character.

The panel noted that he forwarded a link to a video of himself bungee jumping to the legal Web site called Underneath their Robes. The link gave users access to his Web site, and inadvertently to the unprotected sexual images, the panel said.

The panel criticized Kozinski for making only halfhearted efforts to protect the material from public exposure after friends and acquaintances had told him they had gained access to personal information on the family server.

Kozinski apologized for the incident and deleted the pornographic material from his server, the panel said.

Contact staff writer Chris Mondics at 215-854-5957 or cmondics@phillynews.com.