After more than a year of delay, longtime Southold Town building department employee and one-time candidate for Town Supervisor Damon Rallis is scheduled to be sentenced in federal district court in Islip on Jan. 22, 2025 at 2 p.m. by Judge Joan Azrack, according to court documents.

Mr. Rallis pleaded guilty to possession of child sex abuse materials in April 2023 and was initially scheduled to be sentenced last October.

However, his defense attorney Jason Russo said in a phone interview at the time it would be adjourned until January or February this year — to give the United States Probation Department additional time to complete Mr. Rallis’s pre-sentence report.

There had been no word on a sentencing date since the adjournment was announced. Last month, a hearing notice for Mr. Rallis was issued for Nov. 14 and his defense counsel was instructed to to submit a sentencing memorandum by Thursday, Oct. 24.

In a letter to Judge Azrack dated Oct. 11, Mr. Russo requested the sentencing be pushed to after Jan. 10, citing that he has a “full trial calendar for the next six weeks” and is in the middle of preparing sentencing materials with Mr. Rallis. The judge accepted that request on Oct. 15.

According to court documents, Mr. Rallis, who previously served as vice chairman of Southold Town’s Democratic Committee, became the subject of a federal investigation after he reportedly shared a pair of sexually explicit videos of toddlers with an undercover FBI agent. The images were distributed via an “invite-only” group chat on the social media platform Kik in 2020 under the online alias “dirtydaddy431.”

Investigators executed a search warrant and raided Mr. Rallis’ Southold home in February 2021. At an arraignment hearing later that year, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Scotti said agents discovered a hidden camera that was angled to capture images of visitors using the bathroom in his home. 

During the raid, Mr. Rallis, who had been a scoutmaster in Greenport, admitted to law enforcement that he had viewed and posted child sex abuse materials and that he would delete images after viewing them, according to a sworn affidavit from an FBI special agent. 

Mr. Rallis faces a minimum of five years and a maximum of 20 years in prison.