State Supreme Court Justice David E. Nahmias visited here Wednesday and spoke about his service on the high court, his days as a U.S. attorney, as a federal terrorism prosecutor and as an editor on the Harvard Law Review with Barack Obama.

Nahmias visited the Gazette and the Tifton Rotary Club and said he knew Obama best on the basketball court, where “he was better than me but he called a lot of fouls.”

Nahmias has been serving an unexpired term on the high court and is running in his first election; he is currently unopposed. He was appointed to the position by Gov. Sonny Perdue last Aug. 13 to fill the vacancy left when Leah Ward Sears resigned.

As a federal prosecutor and a U.S. Attorney, Nahmias has worked corruption and terrorism cases in Georgia as well as terrorism cases worldwide. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Nahmias became one of the U.S. Justice Department’s leading terrorism prosecutors. As counsel to the assistant attorney general for the criminal division, he coordinated the investigation and prosecution of terrorist activity around the U.S. and in numerous foreign countries. He also assisted in counter-terrorism policy making and served as a liaison to other federal agencies on terrorism-related issues.

In a meeting at The Tifton Gazette before his Rotary Club appearance, Nahmias said since 9/11, the judicial system has been “literally making it up on the fly,” referring to the prosecution of enemy combatants. He said that the legal and popular culture understand the law from a criminal law standpoint and a person’s right to a speedy trial, but with terrorists, the system is confused on how to handle the prosecutorial process.

Whether an enemy combatant should be tried in the federal court system or through a military commission is still questioned and there is no pre-determined system of how to handle such situations.

Concerning current economic times in Georgia, Nahmias said the appellate courts are managing financially but “we are a pretty small operation.”

“My real concern is the trial courts,” Nahmias said.

The state’s budget crunch has slowed the system and Nahmias said that criminal cases get tried first because of a person’s right to a speedy trial. Then, family court cases are tried, followed by civil cases. Delays of up to 60 days for divorces cause emotional and financial stress on families and delays of civil trials can mean the difference between a business being able to sustain itself or failing.

“A lot of times a lawsuit is life or death for a business,” Nahmias said.

Two years ago, the state cut $2 million in funding for senior judges who were paid per diem, who didn’t have staff or other overhead costs, to try cases as needed around the state.

“It was a good system,” Nahmias said.

Nahmias was born in Atlanta, attended Briarcliff High School and was the state’s STAR student in 1982. He graduated second in his class and summa cum laude in 1986 at Duke University. He graduated in 1991 magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.

Nahmias has clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In 1995, after practicing law in Washington, D.C., Nahmias joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta as a federal prosecutor, working on the investigation of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, which resulted in the indictment of Eric Robert Rudolph. He later worked in the Fraud and Public Corruption Section where he successfully prosecuted a Georgia state senator on corruption charges and served as co-lead prosecutor on a major investigation of public corruption in the City of Atlanta and Fulton County governments.

On Aug. 1, 2003, Nahmias was appointed deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal division and was responsible for the supervision of the counter-terrorism section. In 2004, President George W. Bush appointed him U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.

To contact senior reporter Angie Thompson, call 382-4321, ext. 1909.