(Reuters) - U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones likes to joke that his case manager will answer the phone any time of day or night. The judge says he knows this because he tests him with 3 a.m. phone calls just to see if he'll pick up.

"And he always does," Jones likes to say.

The purpose of the joke, which the Houston-based judge likes to tell during court hearings, is to assure the swaths of attorneys that appear before him that he and his staff are at the lawyers' beck and call should they need the court's assistance in setting up hearings or resolving disputes that will help a case move forward.

His availability and desire to serve is part of what he hopes makes the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, where he serves as the chief judge, attractive to businesses that are filing for Chapter 11 protection.

The North Carolina native, 59, who is divorced and dad to three rescue dogs, has succeeded in this goal. In 2020 alone, several of the largest and most high-profile bankruptcies in the country have occurred in his (virtual, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic) courtroom, including Neiman Marcus Group, J.C. Penney, and Chesapeake Energy.

Jones and his colleague, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur, are the only two judges in their district who oversee complex Chapter 11s. From January through November this year, the district — which includes Houston and Corpus Christi — has seen a combined 2,174 new commercial Chapter 11 filings, second only to the Central District of California, which reported 2,274 for the same period, according to data compiled by legal services firm Epiq. This makes for a busy caseload for the two judges, and that doesn't even include the thousands of consumer bankruptcies they tend to as well.

Jones said in a recent interview with Reuters that while he and Isgur discuss the scenario in which they become overwhelmed by the volume of cases they have, that day is far in the future.

"I wouldn't even tell you that we're close to capacity," Jones said.

That is due in large part to the prevalence of video and telephonic hearings that have become customary during the pandemic as courthouses have halted in-person appearances. Jones and Isgur have held training sessions for lawyers to become comfortable with the platforms that allow them to conduct direct testimony from a live witness or offer evidence remotely. Those training sessions are just one example of the efforts that Jones says that he and Isgur have taken on to create a bankruptcy court in which lawyers are eager to practice.

The pair's history goes back to well before either of them joined the bench. After earning his law degree in 1992 from the University of Houston Law Center, Jones joined Isgur's bankruptcy boutique, Kirkendall & Isgur. Jones, who has an LLM from Duke University, where he also received an undergraduate degree in engineering, later went to Porter Hedges.

Jones was appointed by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2011 to join the Southern District of Texas bankruptcy bench, where Isgur had been since 2004. Despite initial reluctance at leaving his life as a lawyer, Jones accepted the appointment.

"I probably should have talked with, at that time, my wife — now my ex-wife — about that decision, because that's obviously a huge change," Jones said. "I just decided that it was something that I was going to do and if I was going to do it, I was going to devote the same energy into being a judge that I did into being a lawyer."

One of Jones' most notable rulings this year came in the bankruptcy of a regional emergency services provider that was denied funding by the U.S. Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program. Deeming the practice of denying loans to bankrupt businesses unfairly discriminatory against companies that are "actually smarter" and making efforts to "provide for their employees and save their business" by seeking bankruptcy relief, he directed the SBA in May to reconsider the application regardless of the bankruptcy. He was quickly reversed by the 5th Circuit, but said he was pleased that he contributed to conversation about the policy nonetheless.

"The arguments that were being made were that someone in bankruptcy was somehow less qualified to receive that PPP loan and was less likely to pay it back," he said. "But if you've looked at the program, that's just a silly argument, right? (The loans) were never intended to be paid back."

It is not uncommon for Jones to deliver blunt and sometimes sharp responses to arguments or positions he finds objectionable. Some of his harshest comments this year came during the Neiman Marcus bankruptcy, including one August hearing in which he declared a legal strategy employed on behalf of beleaguered hedge fund founder Daniel Kamensky "stupid" and "infuriating."

Still, Jones prides himself on his practice of allowing everyone, from the most junior creditor with the smallest claim to the perpetually vexed public shareholder of a bankrupt business, to have their say in his cases. This remains true even when those people, thanks to a bankruptcy system that prioritizes sophisticated lenders over unsecured debt and equity holders, don't have a glimmer of hope of recouping their losses.

The problem, especially for public shareholders, is that they frequently have no idea that this is the reality when they acquire their piece of the company. In the recently-concluded Chapter 11 of J.C. Penney, shareholders wrote more than 100 letters to the court with their stories of distress.

Though Jones is not shy about offering a rebuke once he decides someone, lawyers included, have gone on for too long or have veered off course, he says he'll listen to every shareholder when they learn their investments are being wiped out, even when he knows nothing is going to change for that person.

"It has been my experience that a lot of time, all they really want is someone to listen," Jones said. "They know in their heart of hearts that they're not going to get anything, but they don't want to be ignored."

Watch the video interview: https://reut.rs/2W3o1K0