A former appellate federal judge in New Jersey, she supported her brother but, as audio recordings revealed in 2019, she could be scathingly critical of him

Maryanne Trump Barry, a former federal judge who was an older sister of Donald J. Trump and served as both his protector and critic throughout their lives, has died. She was 86.

She died at her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, according to three people familiar with the matter. Two of them said the police were called to the home early Monday morning. None of the people specified a cause, and all spoke on the condition of anonymity. A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

Judge Barry had been on the federal bench in New Jersey, a position that Mr. Trump’s fixer, the lawyer Roy M. Cohn, was credited with helping her attain during President Ronald Reagan’s tenure in the 1980s. She retired in 2019 after she became the focus of a court investigation stemming from an investigation by The New York Times into the Trump family’s tax practices.