After graduating, Judge worked for several years as a journalist for public radio, beginning with a two-and-a-half-year stint working as a reporter for Mississippi Public Broadcasting. She left to go to India to report and produce for a documentary on the country. After returning from India, Judge landed a job with The Story with Dick Gordon. While planning to do an interview on wrongful imprisonment with her colleagues at North Carolina Public Radio, Judge said, "Very quickly, once we started reading about the number of exonerees, about the number of potentially innocent people in jail... it was clear that this was going to be more than one show, that this deserved to become a series.” Their investigation became “After Innocence: Exoneration in America,” a series that aired June 10–13, 2013 on the programThe Story for American Public Media. When The Story ended in 2013, Judge and two colleagues, Lauren Spohrer and Eric Mennel, decided to create their own program. Spohrer came up with the idea for the show while they were brainstorming on Judge's back porch. They released the first episode of Criminal in January 2014. During the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, Judge started a limited series podcast called "Phoebe Reads a Mystery," where she reads a chapter of a novel each day, the first of which was Agatha Christie's first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. She continued to conduct interviews for and anchor WUNC's program of Here & Now until 2015, when she transitioned into filling in for vacants shifts. The change came with Criminal's increased production schedule to one episode every two weeks. She has been invited for guest interviews on other podcasts including The Murder Squad. She also continued to guest hostThe State of Things.
Public image
Judge's voice has drawn commentary in the media. Alexis Soloski, theater critic at The New York Times, wrote that "no matter how strange or ghastly the crime, the voice of the host Phoebe Judge somehow remains and oddly soothing." The Star Tribune said "Judge's sweetly modulated voice serves as a calm foil to the blood-soaked stories." Judge herself has said, "I hope my voice shows reverence, to not only the topic and subject, but also the guest."
Personal life
Judge says that she is "rigid" because she tends to be inflexible about certain habits, such as running 50 miles a month, preferring to eat scheduled meals, and maintaining a regular sleep schedule. She is fond of long walks "for the fun of it," and will sometimes walk for miles, then call someone to pick her up. Each year, she takes a two-week trip to northernmost Maine, where she vacations Internet-free. Her sister Chloe, 13 months her junior, passed away in 2015. Judge's namesake aunt, Phoebe Legere, is a singer, painter, and musician who is the maestro of the Lower East Side Children's Chorus of the Theater for the New City. Judge lives with her partner, Sara, in Durham, North Carolina.
