James Monte Montgomery

James Monte Montgomery, 65, the former mayor of Athens, was sentenced to federal prison for child obscenity violations in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney Damien M. Diggs.

Montgomery pleaded guilty to sending obscene materials to a minor on Aug. 25, 2022, and was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison last week by U.S. District Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle.

According to public information, on June 3, 2021, Montgomery was arrested after arriving at an undisclosed location after soliciting sex online with investigators posing as minors. In June 2020, Montgomery, then the mayor of Athens, began communicating by text messaging with a person he believed to be a 15-year-old female. Montgomery sent messages to the child describing sexually explicit acts that he wanted to perform on the child and offering to pay the child if she would meet him and have sex with him.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate better, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Tyler Field Office, with assistance from the Texas Department of Public Safety, Collin County Sheriff’s Office, and the Department of Homeland Security-Homeland Security Investigations. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Austin Wells prosecuted this case.