The Detention Center
Gilmer County Adult Detention Center
- Operated byGilmer County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address1 Broad Street, Suite #103, Ellijay, Georgia 30540 (address listed on the detention center page)
- Phone706-635-4625
- Rated capacityNot found
- Jail AdministratorCaptain Misty Williams (named as head of the Adult Detention Center division)
Source: Gilmer County Sheriff's Office — Adult Detention Center · checked 2026-09-29
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Stacy Nicholson
- Runs the jailYes — the Sheriff's Office operates the Gilmer County Adult Detention Center
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term
- In office sinceFirst elected 2004, took office January 2005; re-elected in 2024 to a sixth term (per sheriff's page)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Gilmer County Sheriff's Office — Meet Sheriff Stacy Nicholson · checked 2026-09-29
The Judges
Georgia's superior court judges are elected state judges who hear felony cases. For most charges a county magistrate sets bail soon after arrest; for the most serious felonies only a superior court judge can.
Who sets bail in Gilmer County
- Superior Court: the Appalachian Judicial Circuit, which also serves Fannin and Pickens. Superior court judges are elected circuit-wide in nonpartisan elections to four-year terms and hear felony cases; for the most serious felonies only a superior court judge can set bail.
- Magistrate Court: the Gilmer County Magistrate Court. For most charges a magistrate sets bail soon after arrest.
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-29
The Board of Commissioners
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe county budget that funds the sheriff's office and the jail, and the jail building itself. Some small counties have a sole commissioner; consolidated governments such as Athens-Clarke, Augusta-Richmond, Columbus and Macon-Bibb have a commission instead.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. By law the sheriff is the jailer of the county and appoints the other jailers, subject to the governing authority's supervision (O.C.G.A. 42-4-1). No state agency inspects the jail.
- NoteCounty government site (gilmercounty-ga.gov) was refused by our reader; governing body not confirmed.
- The boardNot found
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- Sheriff site gilmersheriff.com opened; Gilmer County, Ellijay, Georgia confirmed.
- Roster: the detention center page links an inmate roster at offenderindex.com/gilmercoga (Eagle Advantage Solutions platform) showing current inmates and recent bookings.
- Inmate handbook on the sheriff site says bond can be made any time, day or night, and explains cash, property and professional bonding company bonds; no dollar amounts or fee schedule.
- Lieutenant Walter Leite is profiled as Adult Detention Center staff.
- Video visitation scheduling is through jailatm.com; no rates published on the sheriff pages opened.
- Sheriff annual reports (2024, 2022 PDFs) opened but had no machine-readable text, so their contents could not be checked.
- No PREA, deaths, inspection, contract or capacity material found on the pages opened.
- What was tried: https://gilmersheriff.com (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED on first try); one WebSearch 'Gilmer County Georgia sheriff jail'; then gilmersheriff.com home, adult-detention-center, staff profile, meet-sheriff, office-of-professional-standards, inmate handbook PDF, 2024 and 2022 annual report PDFs; offenderindex.com/gilmercoga; http://www.gilmercounty-ga.gov/ (PROVENANCE_REQUIRED).
- State inspection/oversight: Georgia law makes the sheriff the county's jailer. The Georgia Sheriffs' Association, an association of the state's sheriffs rather than a state agency, publishes jail standards and a statewide monthly jail report.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Gilmer County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for the jail, and the judges who set bail.
Names verified 2026-09-29 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered