Federal judge who had in-chambers sex with top police officer issues clerks revised apology letters

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Federal judge who had in-chambers sex with top police officer issues clerks revised apology letters

By Shirley Henderson

June 12, 2026, 11:08 am CDT

U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross of the Northern District of Georgia, who had an ongoing in-chambers affair and later sent her former clerks a nonspecific three-line apology letter, issued revised correspondence admitting to her “harmful” behavior on Thursday. (Photo by Eleanorlross, CC-BY-SA-4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

A Georgia federal judge who had an ongoing in-chambers affair and later sent her former clerks a nonspecific three-line apology letter issued revised correspondence admitting to her “harmful” behavior on Thursday.

Following a media report about the initial letters that she’d written, U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross of the Northern District of Georgia revised letters to her former clerks.

In the revision, Ross apologized for exposing the clerks to her “inappropriate personal relationship,” according to coverage by Bloomberg Law.

“My initial letter was entirely deficient, as I did not take full accountability for my actions, and I failed to give you the apology that you deserve,” wrote Ross in the new letter.

Chief Circuit Judge William Pryor of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Atlanta sent Ross a letter noting that the initial apology letter did not address the required specificity of the misconduct.

Findings of misconduct by a special committee were released in a report over two weeks ago by the judiciary, although Ross, who joined the federal bench in Atlanta in 2014, was unnamed in the report. According to the committee, Ross was found to have lied about having sexual intercourse in her chambers with a police commander during office hours, which was overheard by her clerks.