Enterprise District Attorney says Mission Accomplished.

“I will not be a candidate in 2010 for re-election.” With those words Gary McAliley announced Friday his more than three decades of public service will culminate with retirement at the end of his current term as 12th Judicial Circuit district attorney.

“I have accomplished what I came to do,” McAliley said. “I’ve tried to spend my professional career helping others.”

“When I graduated from high school in 1966, my father told me I could be a doctor, a preacher, a teacher or a pharmacist,” McAliley said. “Then he told me that if I ever became a lawyer to not come back home.”

An ongoing determination “to become a lawyer that even my father would be proud of” was what McAliley called the driving force behind a public service career that began with his election as the first district judge in Coffee County history.

After graduation from Samford University and the Cumberland School of Law, McAliley practiced law in Enterprise in 1974 and 1975 while serving as Kinston’s municipal judge. In 1976, while still in private practice, McAliley was appointed by the county commission to serve as the last Inferior judge in Coffee County history. “I have felt inferior ever since,” he said jokingly.

At age 26, McAliley was elected as the county’s first district judge and took office in January 1977.

He served in that capacity until 1983, when he was elected Enterprise’s first resident circuit judge. He served in that position until his retirement as senior circuit judge in the 12th Judicial Circuit in 2002.

“As many of you know, my retirement was not long-lived,” McAliley said. “Approximately five minutes after my retirement, several business people and elected leaders persuaded the governor of Alabama to appoint me to serve as district attorney.”

Two years later, he was elected to the position. “Even though many in Alabama have moved from being a district attorney to a circuit judgeship, Montgomery officials tell me I am the first person in Alabama history to retire from being a circuit judge to become an elected district attorney.”

McAliley said he is confident he is leaving the office in competent hands.

“Through the hard work and efforts of State Senators Jimmy Holley and Wendell Mitchell and the efforts of Representatives Terry Spicer and Alan Booth, your district attorney’s office will be financially viable through these economic hard times and for many years into the future,” he said.

“Your district attorney’s office is currently staffed with decent, hardworking people who take pride in prosecuting those who break the law,” McAliley said. Millions of dollars in child support are collected by the district attorney’s office annually, he added, “for the benefit of children who deserve being supported by both parents.”

The Worthless Check Division also helps merchants and others, at no charge, collecting nearly $1 million each year in worthless checks, McAliley said. “In addition, your district attorney’s office has established a very successful program which has, since its inception five years ago, provided victims with hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution for crimes committed against them,” he said.

“As both counties continue to grow, the citizens of Pike and Coffee County deserve a dedicated, honest and capable district attorney who will continue to put the people we serve first,” McAliley said. “Therefore, in order to give others adequate chance to put their names before the public, I announce that I will not be a candidate in 2010 for re-election as your district attorney.

“I have loved every minute of my professional career as a judge of various courts and later as district attorney,” McAliley said in expressing appreciation for the support he has received over the decades. “More important, I have a tremendous love for the people of Coffee and Pike counties. “