Special grand jury singles out local activist in rare voter registration indictment
Tanesha Hudson, 44, has voted in the same Charlottesville location since she was 18 years old. This year, a special grand jury charged her with a felony for doing so.
Yesterday, in Charlottesville District Court, a felony indictment brought by a special grand jury charging local activist Tanesha Hudson with voter registration fraud was quickly thrown out. But not before it caused Hudson to lose her job with the federal government.
“The process was the punishment,” Hudson speculates. “This wasn’t about justice; this was about revenge.”
In March this year, Hudson was the subject of a “Hometown Heroes” profile in Vinegar Hill Magazine, “Trailblazing Tanesha: How This Woman’s Voice is Reshaping Charlottesville’s Fight for Justice.” Indeed, Hudson has always been an outspoken member of the Charlottesville community (and quoted often in the DTM), and may be best known for suing the City of Charlottesville for violating her free speech rights, an effort that resulted in a public apology from the City and a settlement for an undisclosed amount of money.
“Black women can be seen as ‘angry birds’ or angry Black women when they are just passionate about topics,” Hudson told Vinegar Hill Magazine, adding that she wants people to look past how she’s saying something and focus on what she’s saying. She also spoke frankly about the “real cost of her activism.”
“You’ll get it from all sides. You’ll be targeted. They’ll target your kids, you’ll get hate mail, you’ll get threats…these are real results of things that will happen to you and you got to just keep going. You can’t stop.”
The week after that profile was published online, Hudson received a notice saying that a special grand jury, consisting of one former Charlottesville city council members, had indicted her on a felony charge (under Virginia Code section 24.2-1004 ) for “unlawfully and knowingly” voting in the wrong location on March 5, 2024, the date of the last presidential primary election. Hudson, 44, has been voting in the Jackson-VIA precinct since she was 18 years old, where her family home is located. During that time, she has never had any problems casting her vote, nor has she received any notices or warnings of any kind. As a result of the felony charge, Hudson lost her job with the federal government.
According to Llezelle Dugger, Charlottesville’s Clerk of Court, Hudson is the only person in Charlottesville who has been charged with this particular felony this year, and one of only around a dozen who’ve been charged over the last two decades. Virginia code section 24.2-1004 makes it a Class 6 felony to “knowingly and intentionally” vote more than once in the same location, register to vote in multiple locations, or vote knowing you’re “not qualified to vote where and when the vote is to be given.” It is designed to keep people from voting multiple times or conducting a campaign to encourage others to do so
Even more unusual, a special grand jury was convened on the recommendation of a regular grand jury impaneled in Charlottesville in mid-February, and Greene County prosecutor Adam Rhea was appointed special prosecutor for this case by the Charlottesville Circuit Court. The Charlottesville Commonwealth Attorney’s Officer appears to have wanted nothing to do with it.
In a June 2026 email to Hudson’s attorney, Elliot Harding, Rhea provided as “evidence” of Hudson’s crime her publicly listed residential addresses and DMV registrations in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. As a lifelong Charlottesville resident, Ms. Hudson has lived at a number of locations in the area over the years, and currently owns a home in Albemarle County, but has always maintained the address of her family home in Charlottesville as her registered voting address.
“I think it's a personality flaw that prevents anyone from seeing the superiority of a guaranteed path to dismissal upon compliance with minimal conditions versus a roll of the dice on a fairly cut-and-dried felony,” wrote Rhea, referring to Hudson and pressuring her to accept a plea deal. “ I won't regret any outcome, having made several very generous offers along the way.”
Hudson refused to accept a plea deal before her June 30 trial date in Charlottesville Circuit Court.
“The biggest issue remains the fact that Tanesha didn’t intentionally vote in the only precinct she’s ever voted… knowing that she was unqualified to do so,” Harding responded. “I don’t know who is pushing this, but the fact that you had to reshape the code section at issue at the grand jury should guide the sense that it’s not been brought properly.”
Harding also added that a simple request to change/update her voting address “accomplishes the justice that’s to be served here,” and that the national primary vote at issue wasn’t even seeking to shape a local election.
According to defense attorney Tim Heaphy, the former United States attorney for the Western District of Virginia, the fact that Hudson lost her job because of the indictment means that “she has real damages to claim.”
“She believes she has been unfairly targeted given her local activism on civil rights and other issues,” wrote Heaphy in an email on Hudson’s behalf. “I believe there are political pressures being exerted by people in the federal and state governments regarding election integrity issues, in particular trying to identify voter fraud which is largely non-existent.”
Indeed, a far-right group known as the Voter Integrity Project began targeting Hudson in 2022. A letter sent to former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares accused Hudson, referred to as a “left-wing activist,” of the same charge leveled by the special grand jury in Charlottesville over three years later.
In the end, a motion to quash the case based on procedural grounds was accepted at trial on June 30. Harding argued that the indictment was invalid “because it was returned by a special grand jury that lacked statutory authority to indict.”
“The Virginia Code creates two distinct categories of special grand juries, each with different powers. Only a special grand jury convened at the request of the Attorney for the Commonwealth may return an indictment directly,” the motion reads. “Because the indictment was returned by a body acting beyond the authority conferred by the General Assembly, it must be quashed.”
Remarkably, this is something you can find out by doing a simple Google search on the powers of the two types of grand juries.
Harding also argued that members of the regular grand jury and those impaneled in the special grand jury were potentially impartial because they had known histories with Hudson. For example, foreperson Eric Johnson had known Hudson for years, and she had been critical of him when he was the principal at Buford Middle School. Former City Councilor Kathy Galvin was also a member of the special grand jury, someone Hudson had clashed with over the firing of former Police Chief RaShall Brackney, the departure of former city manager Tarron Richardson, and over local zoning issues and development projects after she left office. Additionally, former city councilor Heather Hill was a member of the regular grand jury.
These were the members of the two grand juries at the time:
Regular Grand Jury: Jon Bright, Darryl DeGuzman, Heather Hill, Erick Johnson, Boyd Lee Knott, Jr., Erica Uhlman, and James Weissman
Special Grand Jury: Darryl DeGuzman, Jennie Hantzmon, Eric Johnson, Boyd Lee Knott, Jr., Kristen Suokko, James Weissman, Kathleen Galvin
Questions for Rhea and the Greene County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office about the case have gone unanswered. And despite several requests for comment from the Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, including general questions on the prosecution of this particular crime, Acting Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina-Alice Antony, who is filling in for Joseph Platania while he is away, repeatedly declined to comment.
“Again, please direct all inquiries to the Greene Commonwealth Attorney’s Office,” said Antony. “Our office has not been involved in this matter.”
Heaphy, however, made his take on the situation crystal clear.
“The genesis of this investigation is discouraging though not surprising,” Heaphy told Hudson before trial, citing the letter from the Voter Integrity Project. “It proves that you are being targeted for your activism -- which is outrageous.”
Correction from original version: Kristen Suokko was not a former member of Charlottesville City Council.
Correction: though Hudson did lose her job because of this felony charge, the DTM could not confirm why the government agency she worked for made that decision.