Following the Ruusan Reformation in 1,000 BBY at the end of the New Sith Wars, the Republic Army, Republic Navy, and the Republic Starfighter Corps were almost entirely downsized. The remainder was placed under the jurisdiction of the new Judicial Department, along with the limited peacekeeping forces that used to be the Army of Light (although the Republic continued to have a minuscule and purely ceremonial army). These became the Judicial Fleet.
Members of the Judicial fleet wore close-fitting, dark-blue uniforms (whose design would later become the basis for the uniforms of the Imperial Navy). Despite its limitations, the Senate occasionally deployed the Judicial fleet against pirate bands and other threats to the Republic (such as during the Stark Hyperspace War); as such, along with its police and intelligence capacities, the Judicial Forces were the closest thing to a standing military the Republic had following the Ruusan Reformation.
The Judicial Forces were, with the rest of the Department, based in the Judicial Arcology on Coruscant. It operated the Republic's former military academies (such as the Raithal Academy and the Academy of Carida), and coordinated its various peacekeeping efforts with the Jedi Order and regional planetary or sector defense militias.