Richard Kelly

Richard Kelly (July 31, 1924 – August 22, 2005) was an American politician from Florida. He was a Republican. He was convicted of taking bribes in the 1980 Abscam scandal. Early life and career Kelly was born July 31, 1924, in Atlanta, Georgia, and his mother abandoned him in an orphanage at an early age. He attended a one-room school in Crystal Springs, Florida. He served in the United States Marine Corps from 1942 to 1946, attended Colorado State College of Education and Vanderbilt College of Law, and graduated from the University of Florida College of Law in Florida with a Juris Doctor in 1952. While in Colorado, he married for the first of five times. He was admitted to the Florida bar the same year and practiced in Zephyrhills. In 1953, he became city attorney of Zephyrhills and worked from 1956 to 1959 as senior assistant to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Kelly was appointed circuit judge of the sixth judicial circuit of Florida and served from 1960 to 1974, when he was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Republican. Kelly twice survived impeachment efforts to remove him as a judge. This included the passage of an impeachment in the State House in 1963, with him being acquitted in his impeachment trial of the charges detailed in the articles of impeachment. Troubled by accusations of insanity in the 1970s, Kelly allowed himself to be examined by doctors, who declared him sane, allowing him to boast that he was "the only Congressman officially certified as not cuckoo."