PORTLAND (AP) – A York County lawyer and part-time judge has been publicly reprimanded by the state’s highest court on charges of professional misconduct.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court reprimanded Robert Nadeau on two charges, and dismissed with a warning a third charge that he had engaged in unethical behavior by having a sexual relationship with a divorce client. The client complained to regulators after the affair ended, but withdrew the complaint after she and Nadeau reunited.

The reprimands against Nadeau applies to actions he took as a lawyer, not as a judge. The decision means he’ll be allowed to continue to run his law firm in Wells and retain his part-time position as an elected probate judge.

In the order, Nadeau was reprimanded for writing a “discourteous and degrading” letter to a Superior Court justice who had ruled against his request to seal records related to the affair.

Nadeau was also reprimanded for dealing directly with two attorneys who had left his firm and filed a lawsuit in a dispute over money. Direct contact with represented persons is prohibited by bar rules, according to the ruling.

“All of these violations of the Maine Bar Rules are serious,” supreme court Justice Donald Alexander wrote. “Attorney Nadeau is ordered to conduct himself in the future so as to avoid further occasions of professional misconduct.”

Nadeau’s attorney, Stephen Wade, said lawyers sometimes get “emotionally wrapped up in those sorts of things and get frustrated.”

“Litigation is a real-life thing dealing with real issues and real problems,” he said.

The ruling doesn’t end the legal troubles for Nadeau. He is awaiting a ruling on a charge that he misrepresented facts during a Democratic primary for probate judge in violation of the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct. The court heard that case in November, said Cabanne Howard, a University of Maine law professor and administrator of the state’s judicial discipline system.

In a separate case in 2004, the state supreme court ruled that Nadeau overstepped his authority when he cut a register of probate’s salary after she was elected instead of a woman he had endorsed.

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