H. Geoffrey Moulton Jr., left, and Thomas B. Darr, right.

H. Geoffrey Moulton Jr., well-known for reviewing the high-profile prosecution of Jerry Sandusky and for his prolificopinion-writing on the Pennsylvania Superior Court, has been selected to replace Court Administrator of Pennsylvania Tom Darr, who is set to retire at the end of the year.

Pennsylvania Chief Justice Thomas G. Saylor announced Darr's retirement and Moulton's ascension to the court administrator role Wednesday afternoon.

“Geoff Moulton's academic and legal background, coupled with his broad range of experience in the executive legislative and judicial branches render him well qualified to assume the responsibilities of Pennsylvania state court administrator,” Saylor said in a statement released to the media.

Saylor also offered thanks to Darr, who began working for the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts as its director of communications and legislative relations and helped shepherd the office through the development of the Judicial Computer System.

“I would like to express the collective appreciation of the Unified Judicial System for Tom's over 30 years of dedicated service,” Saylor said. “He has served as Pennsylvania's top judicial administrator with professionalism and integrity and he will leave at year end with the thanks of the court and judicial branch for a job well done.”

After joining the AOPC, Darr was appointed deputy state court administrator in 1996, and then as court administrator in 2015. During his 31-year tenure with the AOPC, he helped former Chief Justice Ronald Castille create the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice, and, under former Chief Justice Ralph Cappy, he led the judiciary's role in the design and construction of the Pennsylvania Judicial Center.

Before joining the AOPC, he was deputy secretary for legislative affairs to former Gov. Dick Thornburgh.

“My professional interest from the start has been to encourage collaboration within the court system and between branches of government, as important a goal now as ever but one that is increasingly complex to achieve,” Darr said in the press statement. “It's a great time for Geoff Moulton to use his considerable and diverse experience to take up that challenge for the Supreme Court and with the assistance of a very capable AOPC staff.”

Moulton was appointed to the Superior Court bench in August 2016, and served through December 2017. During that stint, he authored numerous opinions on closely watched issues that were eventually taken up for consideration by the Supreme Court, including whether drug use during pregnancy constitutes child abuse and how overtime should be calculated for salaried employees. In total he wrote 330 opinions as a Superior Court judge, according to the AOPC.

After leaving the Superior Court, Moulton became counsel to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a role he is currently serving.

According to the AOPC, Moulton graduated from Columbia Law School in 1984, and subsequently served as a clerk both on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court.

He also spent eight years as a prosecutor in Philadelphia, including four as first assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District.

In 2013, then-Attorney General Kathleen Kane also tapped Moulton to act as special prosecutor leading the office's examination of former Gov. Tom Corbett's investigation into allegations of child sex-abuse by Sandusky. Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator for Penn State, was convicted in 2012 on 45 of 48 counts of child sex abuse. Two former university officials ended up pleading guilty to child endangerment in connection with the scandal, and the school's former president was convicted by a jury, but that conviction was later tossed by a federal court.

Although Moulton's report ended up outlining little evidence that the Corbett administration delayed the Sandusky case for political reasons, the review uncovered a trove of pornographic emails that rocked nearly all corners of the state government and eventually led two Supreme Court justices to step down.