Deputy Chief Kelley Collier has been revealed as the high-ranking Atlanta Police Department officer who allegedly had an affair with federal judge Eleanor Ross, 58, in her chambers.
An investigation has since been launched following Collier being unmasked for the reported steamy tryst with the married Obama-era jurist, Bloomberg Law reported.
The pair reportedly had sex in “chambers during business hours”, loud enough that other court staff could hear moans, a judicial complaint said.
The Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability of the Judicial Conference of the US last week confirmed it had received a formal grievance on the alleged ordeal.
Online, Collier is listed as a community services division commander with the Atlanta PD.
In a statement, the agency said an investigation had been launched to “determine if the person mentioned in the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability of the Judicial Conference of the United States, is indeed an employee of the Atlanta Police Department”.
Ross was subject to a private reprimand for the alleged affair, according to a source close to the matter.
She is the Atlanta-based US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, and had been nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2014.
Previously, she served as a state court judge, a federal prosecutor in the district, and a prosecutor in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.
Ross has not spoken out publicly regarding the warning.
In a special judicial conduct committee of the Eleventh Circuit, it was revealed that a judge – who wasn’t identified – engaged in sexual intercourse in “chambers and during business hours” over the course of a two-year relationship.
The publicly available report said the relationship “demonstrated a gross lack of judgment” and resulted in a “chambers workplace that was extremely uncomfortable and troubling for clerks.”
The affair – with an unnamed police department commander – created a “conflict-of-interest risk,” the report added.
While unidentified at the time, the report said the officer and affair partner had worked for the police department since 1998 and served as the “commander of a certain division” since last year.
That information aligned with Collier’s biography on the police department’s website as well as his now-deleted LinkedIn profile.
But Ross did not preside over any case in which Collier or the police department was a party to between January 2022 and October 2025, according to the committee report.
Ross received a private reprimand for her misconduct following the special committee finding she had “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.
Some critics have slammed the penalty for being too lenient, for allowing her 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, leader of the Legal Accountability Project said.
The group advocates for judicial law clerks.
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.
Ross was the first Black woman to serve as a judge on the Northern District of Georgia.
Source: The Sun
