Council Appoints First Judges to Municipal Court

Feb. 16, 2007
Contact: Bill Doughty, APR;
678.242.2492 (office) or 678.577.8152 (cell)

Chief Judge, associate judges named; court begins mid-March

Milton City Council has appointed Barry Zimmerman as the city’s first Chief Judge of the Municipal Court, and Brian Hansford and Daniel Phelan as associate municipal court judges.

Council members approved the appointments at their Feb. 15 meeting and Mayor Joe Lockwood swore the three men in.

Zimmerman has been practicing law in the metro Atlanta area for 31 years and currently heads Zimmerman & Associates, a general law practice with a focus on criminal law, domestic relations, personal injury and corporate law. For the past 27 years he has served as both a part-time municipal court judge and magistrate court judge. During that time he has sat on the City of Atlanta Municipal Court, City of Atlanta Traffic Court, City of Alpharetta Municipal Court, City of Roswell Municipal Court, and the Fulton County Magistrate Court. Zimmerman earned his undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and his law degree from the University of Georgia.

Hansford has been a partner in Patterson & Hansford in Cumming since 2001, where he performs all areas of litigation primarily in the areas of criminal and domestic law. Prior to that, he spent a year as an assistant solicitor general in Forsyth County and two years as an associate attorney in the office of Jennifer D. Patterson. Since 2004, he has served as assistant prosecutor for the City of Alpharetta Municipal Court. Hansford earned his B.S. in criminal justice from North Georgia College and State University and his J.D. from John Marshall School of Law.

Phelan is currently chief executive officer of MR Default Services, a newly formed business processing company supporting the mortgage banking industry, as well as partner with Atlanta-based McCalla, Raymer, where he is head of operations for the firm’s foreclosure, bankruptcy, eviction, litigation and REO departments. Prior to joining McCalla, Raymer in 1988, he spent 10 years as attorney and partner with Kurzman, Phelan and Liblang in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Phelan earned his undergraduate degree in economics from Michigan State University and law degree from the University of Detroit.

City officials expect to begin Municipal Court operations in mid-March.

The City of Milton, incorporated on Dec. 1, 2006, is a community of some 20,000 residents in northwest Fulton County. With its numerous horse farms, family-friendly neighborhoods and limited commercial development spread out over 23,000 acres, Milton offers a rural, small-town atmosphere that still affords easy access to the big-city amenities of nearby Atlanta.