A little more than two months after pleading guilty to distributing videos of child sexual abuse, former Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison staff attorney Jason Mark Sims was sentenced Friday to five years in prison and 10 years of supervised release.

Senior U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria, Virginia, handed down the sentence against Sims, 36, who was charged by federal prosecutors in August. As part of Sims' sentence, Ellis has ordered him to write an article for publication about his crime in an “effort to achieve general deterrence,” according to a statement by the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria.

Sims' lawyers, Judith Wheat of Washington, D.C.'s Griffith & Wheat and Arlington, Virginia-based solo practitioner Donna Murphy, did not immediately return a request for comment about their client's sentencing. The charges against Sims stemmed from the U.S. Department of Justice's Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 to combat a growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.

The government's case against Sims stemmed from online discussions he had over the past year with an undercover federal agent known only to him as “socrdad,” according to court papers. The exchanges between the two saw Sims provide the agent with videos showing graphic depictions of sexual abuse with children, including a 4-year-old girl.

Sims was hired by Paul Weiss in November 2011, but stopped working at the firm's office in Washington, D.C., earlier this year after he was required to notify his employer of preliminary charges filed against him in June. Sims was then put on home detention.

A sentencing memorandum submitted by Sims' lawyers to Ellis sought leniency for their client, who joins a sad succession of former Big Law attorneys to see their careers derailed by child porn charges.

Wheat and Murphy called Sims in court papers a “young father who recently experienced the bittersweet joy of holding his newborn son for the first time and then handing him off as he self-surrendered to begin serving a minimum five-year prison term.”

Both lawyers said that Sims himself was the victim of “severe and debilitating” childhood abuse that causes him to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. His lawyers said that during a period of months last year, Sims struggled with untreated depression and alcohol abuse while his wife—the bedrock of his support system—worked 16-hour days. During this time Sims engaged in “intentional and unlawful conduct” that victimized other children, according to his sentencing memorandum.

“While incarcerated he has read their statements and with visible emotion he has struggled to make sense of the reasons he chose to act as he did,” wrote Wheat and Murphy. “This has not been an easy process for Mr. Sims and the effect of his choices on everyone—his wife, his son, the children in the videos—weighs heavily on him.”

Sims' lawyers noted that their client had no inappropriate contact with any real child—and turned down repeated invitations by the undercover federal agent to do so—and had accepted responsibility for his actions in urging Ellis to give Sims the minimum 60-month prison sentence.

The two lawyers also cited Sims' lack of any previous criminal record, his history of doing pro bono work and the recommendations of a certified sex offender treatment therapist and a forensic psychiatrist calling him an extremely low-risk candidate to commit any future offenses against children.

Laura Fong and Kellen Dwyer, former associates at Jenner & Block and Kirkland & Ellis, respectively, were the assistant U.S. attorneys that prosecuted the government's case against Sims. In court papers, the Justice Department sought the maximum sentence of between 97 to 121 months in prison for Sims, noting that several victims have made restitution claims through counsel. Statements filed by several victims are under seal.

In addition to his five-year prison sentence, Sims will be required to register as a sex offender and be subject to computer monitoring.