Attorney James Patrick Kenney Traded Vape Pens For Sexual Contact With Inmate Bodycam

A 75-year-old attorney who once held a Hamilton County judge’s bench stood in his own living room on August 24 with body cameras rolling as detectives took him into custody — then walked him straight back into the same jail where investigators say he traded vape pens and tobacco for sexual contact with an inmate.

James Patrick Kenney is charged in Clermont County with engaging in prostitution, obstructing official business and solicitation — all misdemeanors. But the story inside the complaint runs deeper than the charge list: a former judge with an old sex-crime conviction, a jail access policy built on trust, and a contraband scheme that unraveled because the merchandise got passed around.

What investigators say happened

The Clermont County Sheriff’s Office account lays out a timeline. Kenney had known the inmate for five to seven years, through a man he once represented. On August 4, he signed in at the Clermont County Jail as the inmate’s attorney — his fourth visit, investigators say — and was led to one of the jail’s contact rooms. The rooms have windows, but standard procedure is that deputies do not watch attorney visits. Privacy by design.

Inside, detectives allege, three vape pens and two tins of tobacco changed hands in exchange for sexual contact. WCPO reported that Kenney used his professional credentials to gain access to an inmate he was not representing.

The gap the dogs can’t smell

Why tobacco? Because inmates moving in and out of the jail are screened by drug-detecting dogs — and the dogs don’t alert on tobacco. Investigators say Kenney found the hole in the system and walked right through it.

The scheme broke the way most contraband schemes do: the supply spread. Deputies watched inmates passing tobacco around the jail, started asking questions, and the inmate identified Kenney. Detective Seth Sparks made the arrest three weeks after the contact-room visit and booked Kenney into the same facility where the conduct is alleged — booking number 20262904, the public roster shows.

At arraignment the next morning, Kenney appeared in an orange jumpsuit and a wheelchair — the man who once ran a courtroom answering charges from one. Bond was set at $150,000 cash or surety, and investigators said he has the means to pay it. He remained in custody as of the most recent roster check.

A conviction, then a law license

The current charges are allegations. His 2004 case is not — it ended in a guilty plea. While serving as an assistant Hamilton County prosecutor, Kenney pleaded guilty to sexual imposition for touching a 21-year-old male guest who had fallen asleep on a sofa in his home. He denied everything when a Delhi Township detective first questioned him, then confessed after the sheriff’s office opened its own investigation — admitting he had hoped to close that case and, in his own words, avoid all responsibility for his crime.

The sentence: 60 days in jail with 50 suspended — he served ten — plus two years of probation, and the prosecutor’s job was gone by March 2004. In 2006, the Ohio Supreme Court suspended his law license for two years, with reinstatement conditions that included total alcohol abstinence and random urinalysis. Then the license came back. He practiced for two more decades — long enough to walk into a jail with credentials almost nobody else carries.

What happens next

The sheriff says the investigation is ongoing and more charges are possible, and the case has been referred to the Ohio Bar for review. Kenney is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty — the same standard he once enforced from the bench. This post will be updated after his September 10 hearing in Clermont Municipal Court: any new charges, the bond outcome, and whatever the bar review turns up.

If a conviction cost him a prosecutor’s job in 2004 but cost his law license only two years — who was watching the door he kept the key to?

Sources
Local12 (WKRC) · WCPO 9 · WLWT · Clermont County Sheriff’s Office jail roster

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