The Documented Evidence Behind Wayne County’s Overlapping Roles
A review of the period from July 2019 through June 2026
Part 1: Ellis Law Group: A Pocono Review Investigative Report identified the people, the relationships, and the structure. This is the evidence.
Jessica’s Case Log
The Wayne County Legal Journal — published by the Wayne County Bar Association, where Jessica served as Vice President — documents Jessica Ellis appearing as a private attorney before the Court of Common Pleas throughout her entire ADA tenure (April 2022 – mid-2025). What follows is only what appeared in the Journal’s published court calendars. It may not represent the full scope of her private caseload during this period:
November 2022. Contested custody hearing: Oliver v. Oliver (148-2019-DR). Same week: dependency disposition, In Re: J.C. (26-2022-DP). Her 2025 campaign materials confirm she also served as solicitor for Wayne County Human Services — the agency that drives dependency proceedings. If that role was active here, she was private counsel in a dependency case while advising the agency on the other side. (Vol. 12, No. 36)
June 2023. Five private matters in one week: custody pre-trial Fotusky v. Foster (397-2016-DR) — predating her ADA appointment by six years. Three civil conferences. A family conciliation. (Vol. 13, No. 15)
July 2023. Two termination of parental rights proceedings: In Re: K.M. (TPR of mother) and In Re: C.L. (TPR of father). An adoption: In Re: B.R. TPR permanently severs a parent’s legal relationship with their child. These proceedings begin when Children and Youth Services — under Human Services — files a petition. The DA’s office participates when criminal conduct underlies the dependency. Jessica’s campaign described her ADA and solicitor roles in present tense, in the same sentence. If all three overlapped, she was advising the agency that initiates TPR, prosecuting the underlying crimes, and privately representing parties in those proceedings. The parent about to lose their child had no way to know. (Vol. 13, No. 22)
July 2024. Hess v. Hess (filed 2018 — spanning her entire government tenure). Both Ellises listed as estate attorneys in the same issue. Same issue: “BY THE COURT: s/Matthew L. Meagher, J.” (Vol. 14, No. 21)
June 2025. Kock v. Warfield (30-2025-DR). Weeks after winning the MDJ election. Still ADA. (Vol. 15, No. 15)
Brendan’s Case Log
The Legal Journal documents Brendan Ellis appearing as a private attorney throughout his ADA tenure (July 2019 – present). As with Jessica’s log, this reflects only what was published in the Journal’s court calendars:
February 2022. Mason-Clark v. Clark (210-2020-DR). Two months after Meagher took the bench. (Vol. 11, No. 49)
March 2022. Bozella v. Pajalich (629-2018-DR). Case spanning Meagher’s transition from partner to judge. (Vol. 12, No. 3)
July 2024. One week: private civil case (Adams v. Krause), child dependency proceeding (In Re: J.W.), civil matter (Lucrezi v. Wazz Construction), estate work (Estate of Carol Ann Gulotta). Same issue: Meagher signed court orders. (Vol. 14, No. 21)
May 2026. Estate of Robert T. Edwards. Nearly seven years of dual practice. (Vol. 16, No. 12)
The Website
The Ellis Law Group website — ellislawgrouppc.com — tells two stories.
What it shows: Brendan’s bio discloses his ADA role. The site advertises family law, estate planning, civil litigation, expungement, juvenile law. It promises: “We have deep roots here in Wayne County and surrounding areas going back many generations. We leverage those relationships to better assist our clients.”
What it hides: Jessica’s bio page — updated November 2025 — lists her high school, college, law school, softball coaching, church work, and 25 years of handbell ringing. It does not mention she was an ADA. It does not mention she is now a sitting judge. Brendan’s page discloses. The omission is specific to her. She is still listed as “Attorney Jessica Ellis” with a contact form and a “schedule your free consultation” header — a sitting judge, soliciting clients. The same pattern as Meagher, who was listed as a practicing attorney in the Legal Journal for months after taking the bench.
What it blocks: The site is set to noindex, nofollow — a directive telling search engines not to index its pages. In WordPress, this must be deliberately enabled. Someone searching for “Jessica Ellis attorney Wayne County” may never find the site. The page that hides her government role is itself hidden from the public.
Judgment Execution
Ellis Law Group executes civil judgments — drafting writs of execution under PA Rule 3108 that direct the Wayne County Sheriff to seize property, freeze bank accounts, and force sheriff’s sales. The sheriff’s department carrying out these writs is the same one the Ellises work with daily as prosecutors — coordinating arrests, directing investigations, building criminal cases.
When the same attorneys sign a private writ and hand it to the same sheriff’s office, the institutional relationship doesn’t pause. The attorney directing the seizure works daily with the officers carrying it out. As an ADA, Brendan prosecutes cases alongside every law enforcement agency in Wayne County — state police, county detectives, local departments. The sheriff’s deputies executing a writ of execution on behalf of his private client are the same deputies he works with as a prosecutor. That professional relationship exists whether or not a specific case overlaps. The other side doesn’t have it.
The Commissioners’ Rebuke
During Jessica’s 2025 MDJ campaign, the Wayne County Commissioners posted a public statement on the county website: “a local candidate circulated advertising stating that the candidate is ‘trusted’ by ‘Wayne County’, ‘Children and Youth,’ ‘Area of the Aging’ and other county departments.” The commissioners “categorically deny these statements.”
They did not name the candidate. The departments named — Children and Youth, Area Agency on Aging — fall under Wayne County Human Services. The department Jessica served as solicitor for. She was the candidate in that primary with professional ties to those specific agencies. The commissioners felt it necessary to publicly deny that any county department had endorsed anyone.
The Pipeline
Jessica won. She now presides over the MDJ court for Honesdale Borough. Criminal cases in her district originate in her courtroom before moving into the Common Pleas system. Her husband remains an ADA in the office that prosecutes those cases. Even when Brendan isn’t the named ADA on a given matter, he works in the same five-person office as whoever is — and goes home to the judge who handled the preliminary stages.
Recent filings reviewed by the Pocono Review suggest Brendan may be appearing before MDJ Jonathan Dunsinger — who presides over District 22-3-04 — rather than his wife’s court for preliminary matters. If confirmed, this pattern raises its own questions. An informal arrangement to route an ADA away from his spouse’s courtroom is a de facto acknowledgment that the conflict exists. But where is the documentation? No formal recusal order, screening memorandum, or written policy governing this arrangement has been identified. And the workaround — if it is one — addresses only one stage of the process. The case still moves to Common Pleas, where it lands before Edwards or Meagher. If the conflict is real enough to avoid at the MDJ level, it doesn’t disappear when the case goes upstairs.
During her campaign she promised to “dedicate all her work to the MDJ office.” She said it wouldn’t be fair to juggle.
Two years earlier, she’d described the juggling as a selling point. When Brendan was sick for a few days, she told Happenings Magazine, she stepped in to cover “multiple meetings and court appearances for the both of us” — and called it proof of “seamless representation.” She was covering an ADA’s court appearances while running her own private cases in the same building, and presenting it as a strength. (Happenings Magazine, May 2023)
The cases she was juggling were in a more consequential court.
What Has Not Been Found
No screening memoranda, ethics walls, or agency consent letters across nearly seven years of Brendan’s dual practice and more than three years of Jessica’s.
No written policy from DA Howell’s office governing part-time prosecutors with private practices — though Howell himself maintains his own private firm.
No disclosure forms acknowledging the spousal ADA relationship.
No recusal orders by either judge in any Ellis matter.
No disciplinary or judicial conduct complaints.
No public statement from any named party addressing these conflicts.
None of these documents were found through public searches. They may not exist. If they do, they are not accessible to the people who need them most.
In 2026, a person facing a legal matter in Wayne County should not have to file a Right-to-Know request or spend hours cross-referencing bar directories and corporate filings to learn that their prosecutor runs a private firm, that the firm was co-founded by a sitting judge, or that the prosecutor’s spouse — also a prosecutor — is working cases from behind the scenes.
Everyone involved has had no difficulty making the favorable parts of their careers public. Campaign announcements are press-released. Election wins are celebrated. Bar titles are published. The firm advertises its “deep roots” and “leveraged relationships.” Jessica called herself “uniquely qualified” in print.
The information a reasonable person would need to evaluate whether the system is fair is never a few clicks away. The good stuff is easy to find. The rest required this investigation.
The Exposure
Pennsylvania’s ethics framework doesn’t require proof that a conflict produced an unjust result. The appearance of impropriety is itself the harm. A reasonable person looking at this arrangement would not need to find misconduct to question the system’s integrity.
Every case that passed through Wayne County’s Court of Common Pleas during this period — every criminal prosecution by the Ellises, every private matter their firm handled, every dependency and TPR proceeding where Jessica appeared while holding multiple government roles — is a case where the relationships described in this report were present and undisclosed.
A defendant who learns the ADA who prosecuted them was running a private firm before the same judge — and that the judge built the DA’s office — has grounds to question the proceedings. A parent who lost parental rights to an attorney who was also a prosecutor and possibly the legal advisor to the agency that initiated the case has grounds. A civil litigant who faced a firm whose co-founder sits on the bench has grounds.
The failure to disclose creates legal exposure — for the attorneys, the court, and the county. Appeals, post-conviction relief petitions, motions to vacate — any case touched by these undisclosed conflicts can be reopened. The pool spans nearly seven years across criminal, civil, family, dependency, and orphans’ court matters.
That exposure belongs to the taxpayers of Wayne County. Retrials cost money. Vacated judgments cost money. The bill for undisclosed conflicts doesn’t go to the attorneys who failed to disclose. It goes to the county that employed them.
Where Things Stand
Brendan Ellis is still an ADA, still running Ellis Law Group from 1018 Church Street, still using the phone number a sitting judge used when the firm carried his name. As of this publication, his name continues to appear on filings in the Wayne County court system. Jessica is a judge whose court handles preliminary arraignments and hearings in the same system her husband prosecutes in — from the same five-person DA’s office described throughout this report. The website still lists her as an attorney, still says “Meagher Ellis Law” in the footer, still tells search engines not to show it.
Two judges. One built the firm. One built the DA’s office. The MDJ who feeds cases into the system is married to the ADA who prosecutes them.
Nothing in the public record suggests the people on the other side of these cases have ever been told.
Read Part 3: Ellis Law Group: District Attorney Alfred G Howell
Sources: Wayne County Legal Journal (Vols. 11–16), Wayne County Bar Association directory, PA Department of State (entity #562680), Ellis Law Group website (ellislawgrouppc.com, accessed June 3, 2026), meagherellis.com (cached), Avvo.com, River Reporter, Tri-County Independent, Wayne Pike News, Wayne County Commissioners (waynecountypa.gov), PA Rules of Professional Conduct (Rules 1.7, 1.10, 1.11), PA Code of Judicial Conduct (Rules 2.11, 3.10).
If the names “Ellis Law Group,” “Jessica Ellis,” or “Brendan Ellis” appear ANYWHERE on your court documents, during ANY part of your case — before, during, or after — we want to hear about it. “Involved” does not mean direct primary litigation by default.