Scott McAfee, Judge Assigned to Trump Case, Once Worked Under Fani Willis

The landmark racketeering case in Atlanta against former President Donald J. Trump and others has been assigned to Scott F. McAfee, a recently appointed Fulton County Superior Court judge who was once supervised by the district attorney overseeing the case.

Judge McAfee, 34, rose quickly in Georgia’s legal world after graduating from law school a decade ago, and one of his first jobs was in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. There, he handled early stages of felony cases before being promoted to the complex trial division. The division was led at the time by Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor overseeing the Trump case, according to a former district attorney and another lawyer who worked in the office at the time.

Ms. Willis, who became the district attorney in 2021 after Judge McAfee had left the office, began a wide-ranging investigation of Mr. Trump and his allies regarding the 2020 election that culminated in a grand jury indictment on Monday night.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Willis’s office did not return requests for comment about Judge McAfee’s time with the office. A lawyer for Mr. Trump did not immediately return a request for comment on whether the former president might ask the judge, who was randomly assigned to the case, to recuse himself because of his past working relationship with the district attorney.

The fact that Mr. McAfee worked under Ms. Willis, a Democrat, might provide an opening for critics of the investigation, but Mr. McAfee also has conservative bona fides. While at the University of Georgia’s law school, he was the vice president of the Federalist Society, a conservative law group, and was the treasurer for the Law Republicans, which was described as serving “conservative, moderate and libertarian” law students, according to rosters of student group officers. He graduated in 2013.

While most judges are elected in Georgia, Judge McAfee was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, and sworn in on Feb. 1 to fill a vacancy on the bench. Mr. Kemp has clashed with Mr. Trump over the 2020 election results in Georgia and other issues, but has also sought to avoid getting dragged into Ms. Willis’s inquiry, even unsuccessfully trying to avoid testifying in the case.

Several lawyers who worked alongside and against Judge McAfee praised his intelligence and precision.

Charlie Bailey, a lawyer and former Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, said he and Judge McAfee both worked under Ms. Willis when she led the complex trial division, which prosecuted cases of domestic violence, assault and nonfatal shootings, among others. Mr. Bailey, whose wife currently works in Ms. Willis’s office, said that there were roughly 20 prosecutors in that division at the time.

“He’s a conscientious and thorough prosecutor, and fair,” Mr. Bailey said. “A lot like Fani, frankly, in terms of those qualities. I’m quite certain he’ll do a good job.”

Paul L. Howard Jr., who served as Fulton County district attorney from 1997 until Ms. Willis successfully ran against him, confirmed in an interview on Tuesday that Mr. McAfee worked in the complex trial division, and that Ms. Willis would have been his supervisor for some of that time.

Judge McAfee was eventually promoted to a senior district attorney position and prosecuted murder cases as part of the major case division. In 2019, he was appointed to be an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, which includes Atlanta, and prosecuted cases that included allegations of bank fraud and drug trafficking. In one case, he won the conviction of a man who stole 900 laptops from a tractor-trailer.

In March 2021, Governor Kemp appointed Judge McAfee to lead the state’s Office of the Inspector General, a government watchdog that investigates cases of fraud, abuse and mismanagement. He held that job until he was made a judge.

Esther Panitch, a defense lawyer and Democratic state representative, said she had been on the other side of Judge McAfee twice when he was a federal prosecutor, and that she found him fair and kind.

“Not every prosecutor is like that,” Ms. Panitch said. “So I’m hopeful that he carries those qualities onto the bench.”

Judge McAfee is the newest of the 19 judges at the Fulton County Superior Court. He will handle the case against Mr. Trump as well as his 18 co-defendants, all of whom are accused of working together to illegally undo Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. Ms. Willis said Monday that she intended to try all of the defendants together.

Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim contributed reporting.