For decades, Sheila Abdus-

Salaam was a fixture in New York legal circles. As the first African American woman to serve on the state’s top court, she commanded the respect of colleagues for being a trailblazer as well as having a quick legal mind.

On Wednesday, Abdus-

Salaam’s body was found in the Hudson River in what local police are calling a possible suicide. She was 65.

Her body was found fully clothed in the river in Upper Manhattan at 1:45 p.m. Wednesday, a day after her husband had reported her missing, according to the New York Police Department. There were no signs of trauma or injury on the body, and the cause of death is still under investigation.

It is not yet known how Abdus-Salaam ended up in the river or how long her body had been there. Her death shook the New York legal community, prompting responses from colleagues, judges, and state and local political leaders.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) called Abdus-Salaam, an associate judge on the New York Court of Appeals, “a humble pioneer.” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), who appointed her to the state’s Court of Appeals, said she was “a trailblazing jurist whose life in public service was in pursuit of a more fair and more just New York for all.”

Abdus-Salaam was born in 1952 to a working-class family of seven children in Washington, D.C., where she attended public school. As a teenager, she was inspired to enter the legal profession after an encounter with civil rights attorney Frankie Muse Freeman, according to a 2013 news release from Seymour W. James Jr., attorney-in-charge of criminal practice of the Legal Aid Society in New York City.

Before her nomination to the State Court of Appeals, Abdus-Salaam served as a justice in the First Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, and for 15 years as a State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan. She graduated from Barnard College in 1974 and from Columbia Law School in 1977, and she spent time working with indigent clients as a staff attorney at Brooklyn Legal Services. She also served as an assistant state attorney general.

Throughout her career, Abdus-Salaam’s colleagues hailed the judge for her clarity as a writer and fairness as a decision-maker. Janet DiFiore, chief judge of the state Court of Appeals, said in a statement Wednesday that “her personal warmth, uncompromising sense of fairness, and bright legal mind were an inspiration to all of us who had the good fortune to know her.”

Jonathan Lippman, the former chief judge of New York State, said he and Abdus-Salaam “grew up together in the court system,” including serving together on the New York Court of Appeals.

“It was my delight that in the latter part of my tenure as chief [of the court of appeals] that we were directly able to work together. . . . She was respected and admired by everyone,” Lippman said. “It was a close-knit court. We had dinner together every night.”

This summer, in one of Abdus-Salaam’s most significant recent decisions, she wrote the ruling on Brooke S.B. and Elizabeth A. C.C., expanding the definition of what it means to be a parent, particularly for same-sex couples. The existing definition, she wrote, had become “unworkable when applied to increasingly varied familial relationships.” She ruled that “where a partner shows by clear and convincing evidence that the parties agreed to conceive a child and to raise the child together, the non-biological, non-adoptive partner has standing to seek visitation and custody.”

“She was someone we could all point to — especially here in Harlem — not just women, but people of color,” said former Harlem assemblyman Keith Wright, who said he had known Abdus-Salaam for decades and lived three blocks from her. Wright said often he spotted Abdus-Salaam in the neighborhood, including on the subway, where he saw her just a few days ago.

“She had a tremendous amount of intellect; she wasn’t overbearing with it. She was actually always very nice,” he said. “And when she spoke, people listened.”

Vanessa Williams and Alice Crites contributed to this report.