Keene town Justice Debra Whitson has sent the town board a letter of resignation. Her full term is not up yet, and the board will likely appoint a new town justice.

The board plans to discuss both situations at tonight’s meeting at 7 p.m.

“There is no set procedure outline,” said town Supervisor Joe Pete Wilson Jr. Board members can either appoint someone right away or go about finding a new town justice a different way. Wilson hopes the meeting will help them establish where to go from here.

Whitson could not immediately be reached for comment. Wilson declined to share her letter of resignation, saying board members had not seen it yet.

Whitson is a rare example of a town or village justice being a lawyer. She graduated top of her class from Cornell in 1986, and magna cum laude from Pace University of Law in 1994.

She was an assistant district attorney for Essex County for 12 years before running unsuccessfully against Julie Garcia for DA back in 2005. She was appointed the Keene town attorney in 2008 and elected town justice in 2018.

She is now a partner in the Whitson & Tansey Law Firm in Elizabethtown, and the president and divorce collaborator/mediator at Adirondack Alternative Divorcs Solutions Inc. She also runs a skin care business.