Eleanor Ross Is US Judge Reprimanded for Sex in Chambers (1)

Eleanor Ross is the federal district court judge who was subject to a private reprimand for having sex with a police officer in chambers in earshot of law clerks, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Ross, of the Atlanta-based US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2014. She previously served as a state court judge, a federal prosecutor in the district, and a prosecutor in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.

Ross and other court representatives didn’t return requests for comment sent Thursday through phone calls to chambers and via email.

A special judicial conduct committee of the Eleventh Circuit found a judge, who wasn’t named in the report, engaged in sexual intercourse in “chambers and during business hours” over the course of a two-year relationship, according to the panel’s recently released report. This relationship “demonstrated a gross lack of judgment” and resulted in a “chambers workplace that was extremely uncomfortable and troubling for clerks,” the report said.

The affair was with an unnamed police department commander, creating a “conflict-of-interest risk,” the report said.

Police Commander

The officer was identified by the person familiar with the situation as Atlanta Police Department Deputy Chief Kelley Collier, who commands the department’s community services division, according to the department’s website.

The report said the officer had worked for the police department since 1998, serving as the “commander of a certain division” since 2025. Those years align with Collier’s biography on the police department’s website and his now-deleted LinkedIn profile.

The judge didn’t preside over any case in which the officer or the police department was a party between January 2022 and October 2025, according to the committee report.

“The U.S. Court of Appeals has not identified the police officer as being a member of the Atlanta Police Department,” a department spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “However, the Atlanta Police Department has made an inquiry with the U.S. Court of Appeals into the identity of the officer in question.”

Collier didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent via email, which generated an automated out-of-office response.

Committee Report

The Judicial Conference’s judicial conduct and disability committee in a May 22 order affirmed a February misconduct finding by the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit’s judicial council. A December special committee report laid out the allegations against and resulting investigation of the judge.

The report identifies the judge as someone who previously worked at a district attorney’s office, and said the judge has been friends with a district attorney since 1999. The judge’s affair spanned from 2023 to 2025 and made the judge vulnerable to extortion since their spouse wasn’t aware of it, the report said.

The report also notes the judge attended a primary election victory party for a district attorney, which generated news coverage and was held the night before the summer interns’ first day.

Ross worked at the Fulton County District Attorney’s office from 1998 to 2002 and from 2007 to 2011. She is the only active district judge within the Eleventh Circuit who previously worked for a district attorney’s office that had a contested primary election at the beginning of the summer in 2024: the May Democratic primary for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

The report also notes the judge had a criminal revocation proceeding the morning after the victory party. An archived version of Ross’s calendar during that period of time shows that such a hearing was scheduled for the morning of May 22, the day after the May 21 primary. An entry on that case’s docket confirmed that the hearing took place.

Ross received a private reprimand for her misconduct, after the special committee created to investigate a law clerk’s allegations against her said the judge “has demonstrated a strong propensity for rehabilitation and continued diligent service to the judiciary.” She also agreed to write apology letters to the former clerks interviewed during the investigation and not to serve as chief judge or other judicial leadership roles.

That penalty has received pushback for being too light, as it allowed the judge to remain anonymous and didn’t give litigants in her courtroom the opportunity to raise any conflict of interest concerns they might have.

“The judge’s misconduct “strikes at the heart of judicial integrity and destroys public confidence in an impartial, ethical court system,” Aliza Shatzman, who leads the Legal Accountability Project, which advocates for judicial law clerks, said in a statement released before Bloomberg Law published Ross’ identity.

The judge was also found to have improperly attended a partisan political event hosted by a district attorney’s campaign, and to have made false statements to judges investigating the conduct.

Judge’s Background

Ross presided over the criminal case of reality television stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were sentenced in 2022 after they were convicted of bank and tax fraud. President Donald Trump pardoned the couple last year.

The judge also dismissed a lawsuit filed by Georgia’s two Republican senators at the time that challenged mail-in ballot procedures in 2020.

Ross is the first Black woman to serve as a judge on the Northern District of Georgia. She was born in Washington, the daughter of two school teachers. Her father died when she was eight years old and her older sister, who became a doctor, helped pay her way through the University of Houston’s law school, according to a 2015 Law.com story.

At her 2014 Senate confirmation hearing, Ross introduced her husband, Brian Ross, a former Clayton County prosecutor who currently serves as a Georgia state court judge.