Former Athens Mayor Guilty Of Sending Obscene Materials

James Monte Montgomery

Henderson County Man Guilty of Child Obscenity Violations

TYLER, Texas – U.S. Attorney Brit Featherston says the former mayor of Athens has pleaded guilty to federal child obscenity violations in the Eastern District of Texas. James Monte Montgomery, 64, pleaded guilty to sending obscene materials to a minor before U.S. Magistrate Judge John D. Love.

In June of 2020, Montgomery, then the mayor of Athens, began communicating by text messaging with a person he believed to be a 15-year-old female. Montgomery sent messages to the child describing sexually explicit acts that he wanted to perform on the child and offering to pay the child if she would meet him and have sex. According to public information, on June 3, 2021, investigators posing as minors arrested Montgomery when he arrived at an undisclosed location after soliciting sex online.

A sentencing hearing will come after completing a presentence investigation by the U.S. Probation Office. This case is part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.

Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet and identify and rescue victims. U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) led the investigation. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Tyler Field Office, with assistance from the Texas Department of Public Safety, Collin County Sheriff’s Office, and the Department of Homeland Security-Homeland Security, investigated this case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Austin Wells is prosecuting this case.