would judo and BJJ compliment eachother or are they so similar that i should just take one or the other?

Same art with different focus. Judo typically emphasizes the clinch game and throws a bit more than groundwork. Both the clinch and groundwork are very important to learn. I would suggest going to one school at a time, just choose the one you like better to start with.

They have a lot of similarities but also many differences. We had a Judo guy join our gym not to long ago to take advantage of the stand up game (Taekwondo) and to get some other insites into the grappling game (BJJ/JJJ). I was able to work with this individual quite often and I give him my props for his stand up/take down game. If you want to get into good clinches and take downs then certainly Judo is fantastic. You will be hard pressed to find any martial art that puts a lot into this skill. However when it came to the ground game he was missing out on a lot of skills due to many are not used in the Judo game due to different rules. Of course there are probably plenty of Judo schools out there that do teach a wider array of skills. The nice thing is we learned a bit and he learned a bit and was a good trade off. Now if the guy would only come back.