When a federal appeals court in Virginia pressed the White House in an order this week to take a more active approach in seeking the release of a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador last month, it caused a stir that was felt well beyond traditional legal circles.

The attention was due in part to the order’s blistering language in accusing the Trump administration of failing to give the deported man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, any semblance of due process and to its elegiac tone about the state of American democracy.

But an uproar also ensued because of who wrote the opinion: Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative Reagan appointee who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Judge Wilkinson, 80, has emerged in recent weeks as a scathing critic of the White House’s handling of the case of Mr. Abrego Garcia, who several Trump officials have acknowledged was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order expressly barring him from being sent there.

Judge Wilkinson has voiced his outrage at the White House’s mistake, writing in an opinion two weeks ago, “There is no question that the government screwed up here.”

He has shown even less patience for the administration’s refusal to do much to get Mr. Abrego Garcia back from a notoriously dangerous Salvadoran prison.

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