The same day the State Bar of Georgia publicly reprimanded the Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives for an ethics violation involving one of his former clients, Speaker David Ralston appointed the attorney who had defended him during the course of the ethics probe as one of his two representatives to the state's judicial watchdog agency.

In doing so, Ralston, a Blue Ridge attorney, ignored two lists and a total of 25 attorneys from across the state that the bar had recommended as potential nominees to the state Judicial Qualifications Commission.

Instead, Ralston appointed Marietta lawyer James Balli, a partner at Sams, Larkin, Huff & Balli. Balli began representing Ralston when the bar in 2014 began investigating an ethics complaint that included potentially disbarrable offenses filed against the Speaker by Paul Chernak, a Forsyth County law enforcement officer who had retained Ralston in 2006 to litigate a case stemming from an accident in which he had been injured.