One of the Georgia Supreme Court's younger generation will be leaving in the fall.

Justice Keith R. Blackwell, who is 44, announced Friday that he will resign on Nov. 18, the last day of the court's August term.

The departure will leave another appointment for Gov. Brian Kemp—in addition to the one created by the retirement of Justice Robert Benham Friday.

Blackwell resigned in a letter to the governor, citing family obligations and saying he will return to private practice.

"Our oldest daughter will leave for college in only a couple of years, and her sisters will follow not long behind," Blackwell wrote. "I have decided that it is best for my family that I return to the private practice of law."

Former Gov. Nathan Deal appointed Blackwell to the high court in July 2012. Before Deal left office at the start of 2019, he said his strategy for judicial appointments was to pick young people so they could serve longer and have a more lasting impact.

Blackwell had previously served for two years on the state's intermediate appellate court, the Court of Appeals. His resume includes serving as a law clerk to Judge J.L. Edmondson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He also worked as an assistant district attorney in Cobb County, and practiced law with Alston & Bird and Parker, Hudson, Rainer & Dobb.

Blackwell is a graduate of the University of Georgia and the University of Georgia School of Law. He was born and raised in Cherokee County, and now lives in Cobb County with his wife and their three daughters.

Blackwell told the governor he believed his own resignation in November would minimize the disruption to the court by putting some time between his departure and Benham's.

"I count as the greatest honors of my professional life to have served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia and as a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Georgia," Blackwell told the governor in his letter, which is quoted in the announcement. "In my years of judicial service, I have been especially privileged to serve alongside my former and present colleagues, talented and tireless men and women who reflect—by their integrity, their collegiality, their professionalism, their scholarship, and their shared commitment to the rule of law and the principle of equal justice under the law—the highest standards of public service."

It's a rare event for a Georgia Supreme Court justice to resign before approaching the state mandated retirement age of 75. The last one to do so was current Smith, Gambrell & Russell partner Leah Ward Sears—who resigned to return to private practice in 2009, at age 54, after serving the court as chief justice. That rank falls to the most senior justice on the bench who has not served in the job previously.

Another, the late G. Conley Ingram, resigned in 1977 to return to private practice as a partner at the Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird. Colleagues said they understood that he needed to make more money because he had children in college and law school. But Ingram himself told the Daily Report he felt lonely and cloistered in the ivory tower of the court and missed being around more people—as he had in private practice and as a trial judge. After 21 more years with Alston & Bird, he retired from the firm in 1998 and worked as a senior judge in his hometown of Marietta until he died in 2019 at the age of 89.