Fred C. Galda, 79, Retired Judge

Fred C. Galda, a retired New Jersey Superior Court judge and former prosecutor and Mayor of Paramus, N.J., died on Thursday at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, N.J. He was 79 and a resident of Saddle River, N.J.

He suffered a long illness, his family said.

He was a key figure in two noted criminal cases that reverberated well beyond the New Jersey state line. He was a prosecutor in the trial and conviction in the 1963 killing of two Lodi police officers and was also one of the first judges to allow the battered-wife defense in a case of a woman accused of killing her spouse.

His six-term tenure as Mayor of Paramus in the 1950's and 60's witnessed a building boom that left modern shopping centers as reminders of a thriving economy. Most recently, he was with the law firm of George A. Vaccaro in Paramus, a practice from which he retired in 1995.

He grew up in Cliffside Park, N.J., where he excelled in football and basketball. He was place-kicker on the football team while studying at Michigan State University.

Known for his outspokenness, Mr. Galda turned from law to politics, and the voters of Paramus chose him as their Mayor in 1952, the first Democrat at City Hall in 17 years. Voters kept him in the job until 1964.

He served as first assistant county prosecutor in the case of Thomas Trantino, who was sentenced to death in 1964. Mr. Trantino was found guilty in the slayings of a police sergeant and a trainee responding to a noise complaint at a bar on Route 46 in Lodi, N.J.

Mr. Trantino remained on death row until 1972, when his sentence was commuted to a life term. He asked for parole eight times, more than any other current inmate in New Jersey, was denied eight times and was most recently at Riverfront State Prison in Camden, N.J.

Gov. Richard J. Hughes appointed Mr. Galda to Superior Court in Bergen County in 1967 and he served as presiding judge of its criminal court division until his retirement in 1983. Two years before that, he allowed a defendant, Dorothy Rapp, to testify that she shot her husband, William, in self-defense in 1981 in their backyard in Fair Lawn, N.J.

She told the court that her husband had dragged her from bed, pulled out clumps of her hair, savagely beat her and vowed to kill her before she picked up his loaded rifle and turned it on him. It took the jury less than two hours to acquit her. Judge Galda was the state's first judge -- and one of the first in the nation -- to allow such a trial defense.

Judge Galda is survived by his wife, Ellen Molloy; five sons, Dwight, of Forth Worth, Fred Jr., of Montvale, N.J., Thomas, of North Bergen, N.J., William, of Ramsey, N.J., and John, of Saddle River; a sister, Ester Lansdowne, who lives in Texas; a brother, Karl, of New York City; eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.