Judge Terry Johnson Resigns and Repays $50,000

What He Is Accused Of

A Midland resident had been publicly critical of county government, including litigation that produced a $150,000 settlement. In July 2026, a document carrying that resident’s personal identifying information was posted to Facebook under the caption “Convicted felon trying to be a player.” The document was a summary of a 2015 arrest warrant. The charges behind it were dismissed, and the resident was never convicted. His home address and phone number were redacted in the posted copy. His Social Security number, driver’s license number and date of birth, according to his federal complaint, were not.

Johnson acknowledged under oath that he posted it. He did so in his written answer to the removal suit, filed around August 11, nine days before the grand jury acted. On August 19, 2026, a Midland County grand jury indicted him on two counts of misuse of official information and one count of fraudulent use or possession of identifying information, all third-degree felonies, plus one count of abuse of official capacity, a Class A misdemeanor. Texas Rangers arrested him the same day. He posted a $7,500 bond and was released.

His Defense

He has pleaded not guilty. His attorney says Johnson did not know the sensitive identifiers were in what he posted, removed the post once he learned, never intended harm, and took and passed a polygraph examination on the point. His attorney also said he was disappointed that there appears to be a rush to judgment before a proper investigation was conducted into this allegation. Nothing has been proven, and Johnson is presumed innocent unless and until a jury finds otherwise.

The Four Counts

How the Case May Be Defended

The phrase “has not been made public” is a defined term

Section 39.06(d) does not leave it to ordinary meaning. It defines information that has not been made public as information the public does not generally have access to and that is prohibited from disclosure under Chapter 552, Government Code. That is a narrower class than it sounds. Most of Chapter 552 works by excepting records from the duty to release them under section 552.021, which permits withholding rather than forbidding disclosure.

The Social Security number is the clearest example. Section 552.147(a) excepts a living person’s Social Security number from section 552.021 but says in the same breath that it is not confidential and that the section does not make it confidential under any other provision of the chapter or other law. Section 552.108(a)(2) covers law enforcement information about an investigation that did not end in conviction or deferred adjudication, which fits a dismissed 2015 case, but it too is an exception rather than a bar, and section 552.108(c) expressly leaves basic information about an arrest or a crime outside it.

The driver’s license number is different. Section 552.130 excepts license information and then adds, in subsection (b), that it may be released only if, and in the manner, authorized by Chapter 730, Transportation Code. That is a prohibition, not a permission. If the two misuse counts stand, the license number looks like the sturdier foundation for them, and the Social Security number the weaker one.

All four counts turn on intent

Sections 39.06(b) and 39.02(a) each require intent to obtain a benefit or intent to harm or defraud. Section 32.51(b) requires intent to harm or defraud. The presumption of intent in section 32.51(b-1) needs the identifying information of three or more people, so with a single complainant the State has to prove the mental state directly.

The caption is the State’s best evidence that Johnson meant to harm the man, and he has admitted posting it. His answer is that he never saw the identifiers. If the jury believes that, the question becomes whether an intent to embarrass someone by posting an old warrant carries over to identifiers the defendant says he did not know were there. It is a narrow question, and it is the one the case will be decided on.

The Voters

Four months before the post, Midland Republicans had already removed him. In the March 3, 2026 primary, Jay Marquez took 2,024 votes (37.47 percent), Karen Hood 1,704 (31.54 percent), and Johnson 1,674 (30.99 percent). He finished third and missed the runoff by thirty votes. Marquez won the May 26 runoff with more than 56 percent, and no Democrat filed. He was the only candidate for county judge on the November 3 general election ballot, where he stood unopposed.The removal suit, the criminal case and the Commission’s order are all aimed at an office he keeps for about two more months.

Who Is Running Midland County

The suspension bars him from his duties, including presiding over the commissioners court, but the Commission cannot name anyone to do the job in his place. On September 2, 2026, at a special meeting, the commissioners court appointed and swore in the county judge-elect as acting county judge. The man who beat him in the primary now sits in his chair while Johnson continues to draw the salary.

Chapter 87 of the Local Government Code lets the commissioners court fill a vacancy in the office of county judge under section 87.041, and a suspension is not a vacancy. Section 87.017 lets the assigned district judge suspend an officer and appoint a temporary replacement, but it was the Commission that suspended him, and section 87.017 would have required the appointee to post a bond with two sureties conditioned to pay the suspended officer’s damages if the removal grounds failed, with the county reimbursing the officer the appointee’s pay if he kept the office. Section 87.043’s temporary-absence appointment reaches only military absence in counties under 150,000. The delegation statutes in chapter 81 all carry population or border triggers Midland does not meet, and section 81.001(b) says only that the county judge presides if present, naming no substitute.

None of that means the appointment was improper. It means the statutes do not cleanly provide for this situation, and a county that needed someone in the chair acted anyway. It is a gap worth knowing about, because suspension on indictment is not rare.

Three Tracks, One Clock

The removal suit

On August 6, 2026, the Midland County district attorney filed a petition to remove Johnson from office, Cause No. DCV-26-01527. He filed it as a private county resident, which section 87.015(b) allows: any Texas resident who has lived six months in the county and is not currently under indictment there may bring one. The regional presiding judge assigned the case on August 10 to Judge R. Shane Seaton of the 118th District Court and appointed the Tom Green County district attorney to represent the state. Both assignments were required, not chosen: section 87.0151(b) directs the presiding judge to assign a judge from outside the county, and section 87.018(f) directs the appointment of a prosecutor from elsewhere in the region.

A Midland ISD trustee then filed a verified plea in intervention on about August 9, adding himself as an independent resident-relator without replacing the district attorney or changing the pleaded grounds. His stated reason was to keep the suit alive if the district attorney’s double role, elected prosecutor and private petitioner, drew a challenge. No court has ruled on the intervention or found any conflict.

The grounds have to be incompetency or official misconduct, defined in section 87.011(3) as intentional, unlawful behavior relating to official duties. Section 87.001 bars removal for anything done before election to office, which is why the case is pinned to the July post. And section 87.018(a) is the sentence that matters: officers may be removed only following a trial by jury. A Midland County jury would have to find the alleged grounds true, ground by ground, with no special issues. Then either side could appeal.

The criminal case, which is the faster route to removal

Section 87.031 makes conviction by a petit jury for any felony, or for a misdemeanor involving official misconduct, an immediate removal from office, and requires the trial court to put the removal order in the judgment. No separate removal jury is needed, because the criminal jury has already done the work. Under section 87.032 an appeal supersedes that order unless the court finds suspension to be in the public interest.

Rule 10(c) of the judicial disciplinary rules runs parallel and reaches further. Absent an appeal, a judge is automatically removed on conviction or on deferred adjudication for a felony or an official-misconduct misdemeanor, and if the judge appeals, the Commission must suspend without pay for the duration. The practical lesson is worth stating plainly: for a sitting judge, deferred adjudication is not a safe harbor. It would end the office under Rule 10(c)(1) even though section 87.031 requires a conviction.

The misdemeanor count alone could do it. Rule 2(m) defines an official-misconduct misdemeanor as one involving an act related to a judicial office, an act involving moral turpitude, or an intentional or knowing violation of a law while acting in an official capacity. Abuse of official capacity under section 39.02(a)(1) is, by its text, an intentional or knowing violation of a law relating to the office.

The two paths also diverge on what comes after. Election Code section 141.001(a)(4) makes a person ineligible for public office in Texas only on a final felony conviction not pardoned or otherwise released. Deferred adjudication is not a final conviction, so it would not bar a future candidacy even though Rule 10(c)(1) would end this office. A judge weighing that trade is choosing between the seat he has and the seat he might seek.

The federal suit

The resident has filed a 26-page federal civil rights complaint alleging Johnson obtained the unredacted warrant document through his official access, or through county staff acting at his direction, and published it in retaliation for criticism of county government. His counsel describes the case as being about retaliation and abuse of power, with the First Amendment claim secondary. The relief sought includes compensatory and punitive damages, lifetime identity-theft protection and credit monitoring, with no amount yet specified. This track does not touch the office. It is about money, and it will outlast the term.

What Usually Happens to a Suspended Texas Judge

The Commission’s own list of suspensions is the best available answer, and it is not the answer either side would want. Counting the roughly ninety-six entries posted back to 2001: twenty-six closed following conviction, twenty-one closed with a resignation agreement, sixteen were lifted when charges were dismissed, six ended in acquittal, and seventeen remain listed as pending, some of them for years. Conviction and resignation together account for about half. Dismissal and acquittal together account for about a quarter.

Constitutional county judges appear on that list repeatedly, and they split both ways. One recent example is already in this series: Judge James Oakley of Burnet County, suspended in March 2023 on indictment, with the suspension lifted that September after a jury found him not guilty (File 24). Others closed on conviction and left office.

Johnson had a route to contest the suspension itself and, on the public record, did not take it. Rule 10(b) let him request a hearing within thirty days of receiving the order to show that his continued service would not jeopardize parties before him or impair public confidence; the Commission would then have had to schedule it within thirty days and rule within sixty days of its close. His window closed around September 25. The Commission’s post-suspension hearings page lists only two such hearings, from June and December 2025, and neither is his.

What the Settlement Did

On Monday, November 2, 2026, Judge Seaton approved a settlement resolving the removal suit. Midland County District Attorney Glenn Harwood announced it the following day. It was signed by Allison Palmer, the 51st Judicial District Attorney appointed to carry the case for the State, by Dan Hurley for Johnson, and by Greg Degeyter for the intervening resident.

Two things changed hands. Johnson paid Midland County $50,000, reimbursing the county for the salary he had drawn since the Commission suspended him on August 26. And he agreed not to return to office, resigning effective December 16, 2026.

His term ran to January 1, so the resignation surrendered sixteen days of an office he was already barred from exercising and had already lost at the ballot box. The county gave up a jury trial. Under section 87.018(a) an officer may be removed only following a trial by jury, and section 87.018(c) requires the jury to find, ground by ground, whether the alleged grounds are true. That trial will not happen now. No jury, no verdict, no findings, and no admission anywhere in the agreement.

The Commission suspended him with pay. The settlement did not change that order. It reached the same result by a different route: a civil agreement that gave the money back. A Texas judge suspended on indictment keeps his salary unless the Commission orders otherwise, and nothing in the judicial-discipline rules requires repayment if the case goes nowhere. Here the county got it back by agreement instead.

Harwood’s own statement supplies the reason the county took the deal: “Given the timing of the misconduct, the lawsuit, and their proximity to the end of Johnson’s term, along with the decision by the judge to not remove Johnson pending the conclusion of the lawsuit, this result is the best Midland could have hoped for”, he said. Section 87.017(a) let Judge Seaton temporarily suspend Johnson once citation issued and appoint someone to the duties. He did not do it. That is why the commissioners court had to improvise an acting county judge on September 2 under statutes that do not quite fit, and it is why the removal suit could not outrun the calendar.

Harwood also confirmed the agreement has no bearing on the criminal case, which remains pending. The resident’s federal suit is unaffected as well. He is not a party to this settlement, and his claim is for damages rather than for the office.

Where Things Stand Now

As of November 2026 the civil track is closed and the criminal track is not. Johnson has repaid the $50,000 and leaves office December 16. Jay Marquez, who has been running the commissioners court as acting county judge since September 2, takes the office outright on January 1. The suspension order is spent: there is no office left to suspend him from, and because the Commission suspended under Rule 10(a) without also filing a misconduct complaint, there is no judicial-conduct proceeding left running either.

What is left is the criminal case. No trial date has been reported, and his attorney has said a jury trial could be months away. The office is no longer at stake, which means section 87.031 and Rule 10(c) have nothing to operate on. The stake that remains: Election Code section 141.001(a)(4) makes a final felony conviction a bar to holding public office in Texas, and deferred adjudication is not a final conviction. With the seat already gone, the choice between a plea and a trial is no longer about keeping this office. It is about whether he can seek another one.

Sources

PRIMARY SOURCES

• State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Order of Suspension, Inquiry Concerning the Honorable Terry Johnson, CJC No. 26-1425 (Aug. 26, 2026). scjc.texas.gov
• Supreme Court of Texas, Disciplinary Rules for Judges and Judicial Candidates (Apr. 1, 2026), Rules 2(m), 10, 12, 15(a)(3)(C). txcourts.gov
• State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Suspensions. scjc.texas.gov
• State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Post-Suspension Hearings. scjc.texas.gov
• Tex. Loc. Gov’t Code ch. 87 (§§ 87.001, 87.011, 87.012, 87.013, 87.015, 87.0151, 87.016, 87.017, 87.018, 87.019, 87.031, 87.032, 87.041, 87.043). Texas Local Government Code
• Tex. Loc. Gov’t Code ch. 81 (§§ 81.001, 81.028, 81.029, 81.0291). Texas Local Government Code
• Tex. Penal Code §§ 39.02, 39.06. Texas Penal Code
• Tex. Penal Code § 32.51. Texas Penal Code
• Tex. Gov’t Code §§ 552.021, 552.108, 552.130, 552.147. Texas Government Code
• Tex. Elec. Code § 141.001(a)(4). Texas Election Code

ELECTION RECORD

• Marfa Public Radio, West Texas primary election results, March 3, 2026. marfapublicradio.org
• First Alert 7 (KOSA), Jay Marquez claims Midland County judge nomination, May 27, 2026. firstalert7.com
• First Alert 7 (KOSA), What’s on the ballot: Midland and Ector county voters guide, Oct. 20, 2026. firstalert7.com
• Ballotpedia, Midland County, Texas, elections, 2026. ballotpedia.org

NEWS COVERAGE

• San Angelo Live, Midland County judge indicted, arrested on charges tied to Facebook post, Aug. 20, 2026. sanangelolive.com
• San Angelo Live, Tom Green County DA Allison Palmer assigned to Midland judge removal case, Aug. 19, 2026. sanangelolive.com
• First Alert 7 (KOSA), Midland County judge suspended by state judicial conduct commission, Aug. 26, 2026. firstalert7.com
• First Alert 7 (KOSA), Midland County appoints acting judge; Jay Marquez sworn in, Sept. 2, 2026. firstalert7.com
• Permian Press, Commissioners to appoint acting judge after Johnson suspension. permianpress.com
• Permian Press, Can Midland’s county judge be removed from office? permianpress.com
• Dallas Express, Midland ISD trustee moves to keep county judge removal case alive, Aug. 12, 2026. dallasexpress.com
• Fox News, Texas judge accused of doxxing political critic faces federal lawsuit. foxnews.com
• First Alert 7 (KOSA), Settlement resolves lawsuit to remove Terry Johnson from office, Nov. 3, 2026, reporting the November 2 approval, the $50,000 reimbursement, the December 16 resignation and District Attorney Harwood’s statement. firstalert7.com
• Greenwood Ranger, Johnson agrees to resign, repay $50K to Midland County, Nov. 3, 2026. greenwoodranger.com
• Midland Reporter-Telegram, Terry Johnson reaches settlement agreement. The site blocks automated retrieval; the settlement terms above are taken from the two accounts immediately preceding, which both quote the district attorney’s release. mrt.com

REFERENCE

• Deandra Grant Law, Who Polices Texas Judges? The SCJC Explained. texasdwisite.com

• Judge Johnson has been indicted but not convicted, and is presumed innocent unless and until a jury finds otherwise. The Commission’s suspension is an interim measure under Rule 10(a) and finds no wrongdoing. The removal suit was settled on November 2, 2026 without a trial; the agreement contains no admission of wrongdoing, no jury found any ground for removal true, and no court made any finding of official misconduct. The federal civil rights suit is pending and unresolved, and the criminal charges remain pending and unproven. The readings of Penal Code sections 39.06, 39.02 and 32.51, of the Government Code chapter 552 provisions, and of the appointment question in chapter 81 and chapter 87 are our own analysis of the statutory text, not findings by any court or prosecutor, and no court has adopted them. This post summarizes public records and news reporting for general informational purposes as of publication and is not legal advice.