Samuel Alito net worth: How Supreme Court Justice made millions (2024)

Samuel Alito is one of the richest Supreme Court Justices, he is also one of several who has faced multiple controversies over the past few months.

He has been under fire for some of his comments, right-wing flags flown outside his properties and luxury trips with conservative donors.

Alito is the second-richest justice on the Supreme Court, with a net worth of $10 million, according to a recent Forbes report. The only justice wealthier than him is Chief Justice John Roberts, who is worth $25 million.

As of January, associate justices earn a salary of $298,500, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation reported—an increase from $285,400 in 2023.

Forbes credits large amounts of Alito's money to an inheritance after his wife's father died in the 2010s, and his mother died in 2022.

Alito's parents were from families who had recently immigrated from Italy, his mother a teacher who became a principal and his father who worked as an English teacher, a cryptologist for the U.S. Army during the Second World War and, at one point, a director of research for the New Jersey Legislature.

He was also a registered Republican who authored several high school and college-level textbooks.

The late Alito had "a generally conservative, old-school approach," according to a former employee quoted by the New York Times, and provided for his family through his work in education and textbook-writing.

The father of Judge Alito's wife, Martha-Ann, was an air traffic controller in the Air Force and her mother worked as a librarian on the military bases. Bobby Gene Bomgardner's career saw him stationed in the Azores, Texas, France, Maine and New Jersey at different points and enabled him to buy multiple stocks.

When he died in 2012, the Alitos inherited dozens of these stocks, which were so significant, Alito had to recuse himself from around six dozen cases because of the new assets, according to a 2012 Associated Press report.

Alito's investment portfolio is now worth $5 million, and it includes holdings in more than 24 publicly traded companies. These include: Boeing, ConocoPhillips, Anheuser-Busch and Raytheon, according to his disclosures.

The couple own two homes, one in Alexandria, Virginia, and another in Beach Island, New Jersey, which make up a fair amount of their assets.

Liquid assets make up half Alito's net worth, according to Forbes' analysis, while the rest comprises real estate and pensions.

For comparison, Clarence Thomas, who has repeatedly been in the spotlight for failing to disclose gifts and trips given to him and his family from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, is worth $4 million, according to Forbes. Most of his money is stored in his and his wife Ginni Thomas' pensions.

Brett Kavanaugh is worth $2 million; Sonia Sotomayor is worth $5 million; Elena Kagan is worth $4 million; Neil Gorsuch is worth $8 million; Amy Coney Barrett is worth $4 million; and Ketanji Brown Jackson is worth $2 million.

Most recently, Alito has made headlines over secret recordings of him made by liberal documentary filmmaker, journalist and political consultant Lauren Windsor who went undercover.

In clips published by Rolling Stone, Alito can be heard agreeing with Windsor's leading comments about the left or the right having to "win" ideologically.

"One side or the other is going to win," Alito says in a recording. "I mean, there can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it's difficult...Because there are differences in fundamental things that really can't be compromised. They really can't be compromised. So it's not like you are going to split the difference."

Alito was also recorded blaming the media for "doing nothing but criticize" the Supreme Court and saying the country needs to "return to godliness."

The Supreme Court Justice has also faced criticism over right-wing flags associated with the overthrow of the 2020 election result flying outside his properties.

He has blamed this on his wife, who has since angered people even more by saying she wants to respond to Pride flags in June with a flag displaying the Italian word for shame on it.

Before all this, Alito was included in the 2023 ProPublica report that outed justices, including Clarence Thomas, for accepting and failing to disclose multiple trips and gifts from right-wing billionaires.