A Cornelia attorney is free on bond after being arrested for allegedly forging the signatures of Habersham County Superior Court Judge B. Chan Caudell and an assistant district attorney in an effort to have a client's ankle monitor removed.

Paul "Jake" York, who runs a solo practice and serves as solicitor for the city of Cornelia, was arrested July 10 and charged with two counts of forgery and one count of filling a false document after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation looked into the March incident.

York, 41, was released from the Habersham County Jail after posting a $6,900 bond.

Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Christian said his office recused "because one of my ADAs is a victim" in the case. The case was assigned to Piedmont DA Brad Smith, who did not respond to requests for comment.

York, a 2014 graduate of Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, did not respond to email or phone inquiries.

As first reported by Cornelia's Northeast Georgian newspaper, York was representing a woman charged with aggravated stalking after contacting her husband in violation of a no-contact order stemming from an earlier incident in which she allegedly struck him.

The woman, Valerie Ryals, was ordered to wear an ankle monitor.

As detailed in court documents, York had asked ADA Meredith Davis to sign off on a bond modification allowing Ryals to have the monitor removed because it was costing the single mother of two children $380 every two weeks in a case he thought was likely to be dismissed.

On March 9, York filed an order allowing the device to be removed, purportedly signed by Caudell and Davis.

Three days later, Caudell entered an order to set aside the consent order, writing that Davis had said she never signed the order and that he "also has concerns" about his purported signature.

"The court does not recall signing the order. The date the order was purportedly signed, March 4, 2020, the undersigned was not in the circuit and was unavailable to to sign the order," Caudell wrote.

Attached to the order is a transcript of a phone call between Caudell, York, Davis and Christian in which York denied signing Caudell's signature but conceded to signing Davis' because he thought she had agreed to the modification.

"I mean, I thought we had hammered that out yesterday where she gave me the green light," York is quoted in the transcript.

"Bad assumption on my part, I guess," he said.

Davis said she had made clear to York that she could not agree to any such modification until she talked to Ryals' ex-husband.

Davis is quoted saying she had no idea the bracelet was removed until her investigator texted her.

"I did not agree to do this," she said. "I had no idea this was being done."

Caudell also said that he didn't think his signature was real.

"Well, I would just be frank with you," he said. "This doesn't look like my signature. … I couldn't swear that it's not, but I don't—it doesn't look like my signature."

Christian noted that all three signatures were apparently signed by the same pen, to which Caudell responded that he makes a habit of "never signing a document, particularly an order, unless I put a date on it. I never, never would sign an order and leave it without a date. All right? So—and I was in Atlanta on the 4th."

Christian said the matter was "at least a Bar issue and, at most, a cause to referral to the GBI for investigation."

York said he apparently misunderstood his communications with Davis.

"How I went about doing it, I'm not going to sit here and say that was the best way to do things," he said. "It was not. It was stupid."

Caudell agreed with Christian that "at a minimum, this is going to be a Bar referral."

"This is serious," said the judge.