Named a Georgia assistant district attorney of the year is just the latest accomplishment for Amber Brantley, whose upward trajectory has occasionally ventured off the beaten path.
Brantley, 34, announced her campaign last week for Augusta Circuit district attorney. She’ll face Augusta Circuit District Attorney Jared Williams, 34, in the May 2024 Democratic primary. Williams won his first term in 2020.
Brantley’s campaign is currently being managed by Georgia Strategy Group, which helped propel Garnett Johnson to the Augusta mayor’s office last year. Brantley did not return a phone call or email request for a brief interview.
As she vies to be chief prosecutor in Augusta Superior Court, she’ll be a relative newcomer in a jurisdiction where Sheriff Richard Roundtree says over a tenth of the jail population is facing murder charges.
Brantley was raised in the coastal Effingham County community of Clyo. She’s the first in her family to finish college or attain a law degree, according to prior reports.
Said to be inspired by lawyer TV shows in middle school, Brantley got an associate’s degree in criminal justice from Georgia Military College, followed by a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Valdosta State University. Working in Valdosta law offices, she enrolled at Florida Coastal School of Law a decade ago. She also became a certified guardian ad litem volunteer.
Brantley graduated with a Juris Doctor from Florida Coastal in 2015 and was admitted to the bar in Georgia in 2016.
The for-profit Jacksonville law school was founded in 1996. It had 1,740 students in 2010, but by 2017 ran into accreditation issues with the American Bar Association and after the 2021 summer semester ceased to exist. A class-action lawsuit canceled millions in Florida Coastal student loan debt last last year.
Brantley went on to serve as an assistant district attorney in the Southern Judicial Circuit in Valdosta for four years.
According to prior reports, she met Augusta Solicitor General Omeeka Loggins at an Atlanta event and joined the Augusta solicitor’s office as an assistant solicitor general in 2019, facilitating the office’s domestic violence accountability court.
Columbia County Judicial Circuit District Attorney Bobby Christine hired Brantley, now senior assistant district attorney, when the circuit began operations in July 2021.
Christine nominated Brantley for assistant district attorney of the year, given by the District Attorney Association of Georgia, earlier this month. She won for Division 1, which is circuits with fewer than 13 assistant district attorneys.
Today, Brantley serves on the elections committee for the State Bar of Georgia, as a director for the state bar’s Young Lawyers Division and as secretary of the Augusta Bar Association.
Brantley was in the Leadership Augusta class of 2022 and in 2021 was named one of Georgia Trend’s 40 under 40 and a Top 10 in 10 young professionals to watch by the Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce.
She is Augusta vice president for the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys and became a certified Realtor in 2021.
