Pete Temesgen ’09 Built a Career as a Judge in a Small Georgia City

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Courtesy of Pete Temesgen ’09

When Pythias “Pete” Temesgen ’09 visited Columbus, Georgia, for the first time, he thought it was a pretty cool place. The smaller southern city of 200,000 is situated on a quiet part of the Chattahoochee River bordering Alabama, two hours away from Atlanta or any sort of metropolis. It had a nice enough movie theater, a pleasant pace of life, and the warm, friendly populace that you would expect from the middle of the South. He wouldn’t dare tell his wife-to-be, Natalia ’08, that he had mistaken her hometown for the capital of Ohio when she first mentioned it over a beer at Cap & Gown, nor would he have considered it a first choice for a home. After all, he was in his first year of law school at Boston University, fresh off his graduation from Princeton. Everyone knows that any Princetonian in that situation would be looking at New York, or Boston, or anywhere but Columbus.

“You don’t think Columbus is in the top five places to be after Princeton?” he jokes.

Fate had a funny way of working things out. Pete married Natalia in his second year of law school and they had a daughter in his third. Life was moving fast, and the job market in Boston wasn’t great. So the young family packed up their things and moved to Columbus. “The plan was to stay there for just a few months to collect ourselves,” Temesgen says. He had no intention of taking the Georgia bar, so he got a job as a judicial clerk. Natalia started lecturing in creative writing at Columbus State University, and the two sat tight, waited, and got to know the place.

“All the things I liked about it when I first visited — the people, the pace of life — just felt even more pleasant.” Within a year, Temesgen did take and pass the Georgia bar, and he became a civil attorney; three years after that, he began doing private litigation between Columbus and Atlanta. By 2015, he was teaching law classes at Columbus State, and in 2022, he was sworn in as a judge for the state of Georgia. In less than a decade, Columbus had gone from a temporary move to a home where he was a civil servant and leader.

“I cannot say I always envisioned a career in public service,” he says. “As a 7-year-old who had arrived in the United States by myself, I was simply trying to navigate a new world.” Temesgen was born into conflict in a part of Ethiopia that is now Eritrea, and his mother sent him to live with her parents in Houston. Later, studying in the School of Public and International Affairs helped him better understand that political conflict, and it also opened his eyes to how institutions can hold societies together, he says. It  also placed a subtle expectation on students: If they got in, they would commit part of their early careers, at least, to public service.

“Looking back now, I see how my early experiences helped me walk into my calling,” Temesgen says.

Temesgen remains a staunch believer in his work in public service and says his newfound home in Columbus is right where he belongs. “I did have that gnawing feeling, ‘Am I going to use all of my skills in the best way I possibly can being down here?’” Temesgen says. “The truth I’ve come to understand is that you can grow where you’re planted. You can have a fulfilling and edifying life in service to others, doing something meaningful, wherever that may be.”