Justin was born and raised in northwestern Connecticut. After earning both a B.A. (cum laude and with distinction in the major) and an M.A. in Classics from Yale, he taught Latin for two years in the Nantucket Public Schools before moving across the country to pursue a Ph.D. in Classics at U.C. Berkeley. Upon advancing to candidacy at Berkeley, he returned to his beloved home state to write a dissertation entitled "Horace, Wallace Stevens, and the Sublime." He looks forward to completing this dissertation during the 2026–27 academic year.

Since joining the Taft community in 2019, Justin has had the pleasure of serving as a Classics and English teacher, cross country and track coach, dorm head, and class dean. He continues to devote himself to the study of classical philology, the practice of aesthetic criticism, and the reading and writing of poetry. As a scholar, he is primarily interested in influence (e.g., as manifested in Horace's Odes, in Joyce's Finnegans Wake, and in Stevens's "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction"). As a critic in the Paterian mold, he aims to seek out and to render appreciations of works which most and best yield the fruit of a quickened and multiplied consciousness. And as a lover of poetry, he hopes to empower the imagination to improve reality.