On February 11, the Judicial Council of the Eleventh Circuit published an order with remarkable conclusions: a federal district court judge somewhere in the Eleventh Circuit "engag[ed] in an extramarital affair with a law enforcement officer and, in the course of the affair, having sexual intercourse in the Subject Judge's office during work hours and within hearing distance of the judge's clerks." Ultimately, however, the Council issues a private reprimand, rather than a public reprimand. The identity of the judge is not disclosed. But many of the clues in the memorandum point to a particular judge.
First, we can easily narrow down which of the three states in the Eleventh Circuit is at issue. The order refers to a "victory party for a District Attorney" in 2024 the night before "the judge's summer interns' first day." Florida does not have District Attorneys; they are called State Attorneys. So we are down to Alabama and Georgia. In 2024, the Alabama primary was on March 4 and the primary runoff was on April 16. Those dates don't match with when a summer intern would start. In Georgia, the primary was on May 21, 2024. That date matches up well with the start of a summer internship.
Second, the memorandum indicates that the subject judge is not currently the Chief Judge of the District. The memorandum further states that the chambers of the chief judge are "configured almost identically to the Subject Judge's chambers," which suggests the chief judge and the subject judge are in the same building. Georgia is divided into a Northern District, a Middle District, and a Southern District. The Chief Judge of the Southern District is stationed in Savannah. He appears to be the only active status judge stationed in that building. The Chief Judge of the Middle District is stationed in Albany. No other active status judges are stationed in Albany. As best as I can tell, all of the active Northern District Judges have chambers in the Richard B. Russell building in Atlanta. (I visited that high-rise tower in 2008 when I interviewed with Jack Camp, another disgraced NDGA judge.) And it would stand to reason that chambers on different floors would have similar layouts. It seems very likely that the subject judge is stationed in Atlanta.
