Newport, KY — Former District Court Judge and school board member Tim Nolan plead guilty to 21 counts of human trafficking in February and this week, he was sentenced to 20 years behind bars.
In court it was revealed that the judge threatened young women and girls under the age of 18 with arrest to force them into sex. On one occasion a victim was living on his property and he forced to evict her if she did not have sex with him. He also gave numerous victims heroin.
During the sentencing, Prosecutor Barbara Whaley read statements from some of the women in court. Whaley noted that seven of the 19 victims were under 16 years old.
“Tim Nolan, I want to say, you ruined my life,” one teenage victim wrote in her letter. “You ruined my childhood teenage years and made me lose hope. I hate you.”
“I was forced to stay in his apartment in Alexandria and was told if I ever left, he would call the police and I would go back to jail because I was on the run,” wrote one victim. “I ended up turning myself in because jail was better than one more second spent with Tim Nolan.”
As TFTP reported at the time of his arrest, Judge Tim Nolan of California, Kentucky represented District 5 on the Campbell County School Board. He served at the chair of the 2016 Donald Trump campaign in Campbell County.
During Trump’s presidential run in 2016, Judge Nolan was serving as the chair of his campaign. The alleged sex trafficking occurred in August of 2016 — while Nolan was working on the Trump campaign.
As RCN reports, Nolan is an outspoken and controversial figure in local politics. In 2016, he sued the creator of GOPfacts.org, which took aim at Nolan and others, and specifically referred to Nolan as a vehement racist and posted a photo that purported to be of Nolan in a Ku Klux Klan robe.
Nolan was appointed by Governor Matt Bevin to the Kentucky Boxing and Wrestling Commission but was removed only days later when the Klu Klux Klan scandal erupted.
Unlike Governor Bevin, however, Trump did not remove the Judge from his campaign.
Among the charges that Nolan pleaded guilty to were human trafficking, attempted human trafficking and giving drugs and alcohol to minors. According to charges read in court, Nolan told one of his victims that he would “call his friends in the FBI and other law enforcement to arrest her.”
After the original guilty plea, Nolan claimed he was innocent and attempted to delay sentencing multiple ways, including firing his attorney in March and trying to withdraw his guilty plea, according to WSMV.