Federal judges would be required to report stock trades over $1,000 within 45 days and post their financial-disclosure forms online under legislation proposed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Senate and House of Representatives.

The two bills, to be introduced as soon as today, have been drafted by both Democrats and Republicans in response to a Wall Street Journal investigation finding 131 federal judges violated federal law by hearing lawsuits involving companies in which they reported owning stock, according to...

Federal judges would be required to report stock trades over $1,000 within 45 days and post their financial-disclosure forms online under legislation proposed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Senate and House of Representatives.

The two bills, to be introduced as soon as today, have been drafted by both Democrats and Republicans in response to a Wall Street Journal investigation finding 131 federal judges violated federal law by hearing lawsuits involving companies in which they reported owning stock, according to congressional aides.

The House Judiciary Committee also is considering a range of new accountability rules for the judiciary. It has scheduled a hearing Tuesday to examine “breaches identified in The Wall Street Journal’s report” about federal judges who hold stocks, and will question the chairwoman of the federal judiciary’s ethics committee and judicial ethics professors.

Narrower bills in the House and Senate would increase reporting requirements for judges who trade stocks frequently. The Journal investigation found 61 judges who didn’t just own stocks of companies that were litigants in their courtrooms. Accounts held by the judges or their families traded shares as suits were progressing.

The Senate version of the stock-trading reporting bill, called the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act, would require judges to comply with the same law that applies to the president, vice president, presidential-appointed administration officials, senators and House members, according to congressional aides and a draft of the bill.

That law, known as the STOCK Act for Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, requires government officials to report their financial transactions over $1,000 within 45 days.

“This legislation would subject federal judges to the same disclosure requirements of other federal officials so we can be sure litigants are protected from conflicts of interest and cases are decided fairly,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), said.

A second provision would require the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to create an online database of all judges’ financial disclosures. The agency would be required to post the reports online within 90 days of receiving the information in “a full-text searchable, sortable, and downloadable format for access by the public.” The bill would take effect six months after passage.

The legislation would apply to district court judges and federal appellate judges. Bankruptcy and magistrate judges wouldn’t be included.

Sen. John Cornyn says legislation he is sponsoring ‘would subject federal judges to the same disclosure requirements of other federal officials.’

Photo: Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

In response to the proposed legislation, David Sellers, spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the agency that administers the federal courts, said the judiciary publicly releases in electronic form judges’ financial-disclosure reports at no cost to the requesting party. In the past, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has resisted proposals to make financial disclosures more readily available online, citing security concerns.

“We are considering ways to automate the release of these reports so they are available more quickly and in a manner more convenient to the public, while also balancing the serious safety and security considerations that exist,” Mr. Sellers said.

The text of the legislation referenced the Journal articles, saying “recent reports indicate certain Federal judges have failed to recuse themselves from cases and controversies in which the financial interests of the Federal judges are implicated.”

The bill is co-sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee members of both parties. Drafted by U.S. Sens. Cornyn and Chris Coons (D., Del.), the bill is co-sponsored by Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Republicans John Kennedy of Louisiana and ranking member Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

“Litigants need confidence that they will receive an unbiased hearing free from outside influence and based only on the facts and the law,” Sen. Coons said.

On the House Judiciary Committee, Reps. Deborah Ross (D., N.C.) and Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) are sponsoring the companion bill, congressional aides said.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler plans to revive a courts bill that had lost momentum during the pandemic, after the Journal’s investigation of judges’ stockholdings.

Photo: Greg Nash/Press Pool

Separately, House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) is writing what he is calling the 21st Century Courts Act, which is expected to include sanctions for judges who commit recusal violations, according to congressional aides.

Mr. Nadler had introduced a similar courts bill in early 2020 that included the requirement to post judges’ financial-disclosure forms online; the effort lost momentum during the pandemic.

Mr. Nadler plans to revive the legislation, after the Journal reported that judges have improperly failed to disqualify themselves from 685 court cases around the nation since 2010. Reps. Nadler and Hank Johnson (D., Ga.), who is chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the federal courts, said late last month they would hold hearings and reintroduce the bill.

“This would appear to constitute a massive failure of not just individual judges but of the entire system that is ostensibly in place to prevent this illegal conduct,” Messrs. Nadler and Johnson said in a statement about the Journal’s report.

The changes in how and when federal judges are required to disclose financial transactions would be the first in decades. The bill amends the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, which requires the financial-disclosure reports.

Nothing bars judges from owning stocks, but federal law since 1974 has prohibited judges from hearing cases that involve a party in which they, their spouses or their minor children have a “legal or equitable interest, however small.” Violations of the 1974 law almost never become public.

Jan Baran, an ethics lawyer who served on the American Bar Association commission that last revised the Model Code of Judicial Conduct, said the Journal’s findings highlighted the need for reforms to bring “better transparency, more timely disclosure and improved policing of conflicts.”

Mr. Baran said he believes judges have become complacent because of lack of transparency. “Since access to federal judges’ annual disclosures is so difficult and feared by lawyers, judges have not benefited from the scrutiny other public officials receive when making similar public disclosures,” he said.

Currently, judges’ financial disclosures are filed annually by May of the following year. The Free Law Project, a nonpartisan legal research nonprofit group that recently posted judges disclosures for 2010 to 2018 online, said it is waiting for judges’ disclosures from 2019 to be released.

Litigants generally don’t see the forms, and they aren’t released in most cases soon enough to be informative. If plaintiffs or defendants learn that a judge on their case has a financial interest that may require a recusal, they can move for a disqualification. In general, it often falls to the judge with the potential conflict to make the decision.

At this week’s hearing, Judge Jennifer Elrod, who is chairwoman of the Committee on Codes of Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States, is set to testify, along with law Profs. Jamal Greene of Columbia University, Renee Knake Jefferson of the University of Houston and Thomas Morgan of George Washington University.

Write to Coulter Jones at Coulter.Jones@wsj.com and Joe Palazzolo at joe.palazzolo@wsj.com