Former Mercer law student gets prison time for possessing thousands of child porn files
A former Mercer University law student has been sentenced to six years and five months in prison after he admitted to possessing thousands of pictures and videos of child pornography.
Gregory Gallagher, 37, pleaded guilty April 22 to one count of possessing child pornography and was sentenced Wednesday by Judge Ashley C. Royal. He will be on supervised release for 15 years after he serves prison time, and also will have to pay $169,649 in restitution to the victims.
He also will be required to register as a sex offender once he is released from prison.
“Children who experience the horror of being sexually abused are continually traumatized each and every time the image or video of the heinous act is viewed,” said Acting U.S. Attorney C. Shanelle Booker. “These images are permanent and cause harm well beyond the moment they were originally captured.”
Tips given to GBI led to Mercer law student
The Georgia Bureau of Investigations’ Internet Crimes against Children division received five tips from a cloud infrastructure company in August 2021 of suspected child sex abuse material. Their investigation led to Gallagher, who studied at Mercer Law at the time.
Through a search warrant executed in January 2022, investigators found a folder that included 38 videos and 1,970 pictures of child pornography in Gallagher’s cloud account. They also found another folder uploaded to the cloud from his cellphone that contained two videos and 3,389 pictures of child pornography.
In March 2022, officers executed search warrants at residences in Macon and Marietta. But in Gallagher’s phone, they found 97 videos and 5,749 pictures of child pornography that included “very young children and toddlers.”
“This conviction is a victory for justice and a warning to those who prey on children,” said Steven Schrank, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations that covers Georgia and Alabama. “We will find you and you will face the full force of the law.”
Jennifer Fairfield, spokesperson for Mercer University, told The Telegraph on Thursday that the university did not have any information to share on the case.
