Tim Greenway, a Roanoke County School Board member running for reelection this fall, has been charged with an election-related misdemeanor.
Online Roanoke County General District Court records show that a class 1 misdemeanor charge was filed Wednesday.
Greenway was released on a summons, the online record says. An arraignment was scheduled for Thursday but was continued; another hearing has been set for Oct. 16.
Roanoke County Commonwealth’s Attorney Brian Holohan said Thursday evening that Eric Branscom, the commonwealth’s attorney for Floyd County, had been named special prosecutor for the case prior to the charge being filed.
A conviction for a class 1 misdemeanor can be punished by up to one year in jail, a fine of up to $2,500, or both. A misdemeanor conviction for an election-related issue would not bar Greenway from serving on the school board.
The online court records don’t specify the nature of the charge but cite a state code section that deals with election-related offenses and penalties.
Greenway had been under scrutiny over the summer related to issues with his paperwork to get on the ballot for the school board race.
The issues with Greenway’s candidate petitions were first reported by The Roanoke Times. As of July 9, the situation was being reviewed by Virginia State Police, according to the Times.
“Tim has taken complete responsibility for the mistakes that were on these forms,” Greenway’s attorney, John Lichtenstein, said by email Thursday. “There was no question regarding the accuracy of those who then and now supported him as reflected on the forms. Tim corrected the mistake and successfully resubmitted his forms.”
The statement said Greenway looks forward to continuing to serve the Vinton District on the school board. He was first elected in 2015.
Greenway was required to gather 125 signatures from voters in the Vinton District to get on the ballot for the November election. He submitted those signature pages in May, but was asked by Roanoke County Registrar Anna Cloeter to resubmit his paperwork to correct issues with the affidavits and notarizations on some pages, according to a letter from Cloeter to Greenway dated May 30 and obtained by Cardinal News.
After Cloeter told Greenway how to fix the issues, he submitted recompleted portions of the petitions on May 27, but told Cloeter that he hadn’t had the petition circulator appear before a notary to re-sign the affidavits.
In the letter, Cloeter said she had consulted with the state Department of Elections, the county electoral board and the county attorney and believed that problems with the paperwork remained. Along with reviewing the issues with the notarization and affidavits, she referenced three instances in which a voter appeared to sign a petition for their spouse as well as their own petition entry.
Greenway submitted new petition pages and qualified to be on the ballot on June 13, according to email exchanges between Greenway and Cloeter obtained by Cardinal News. Greenway told The Roanoke Times in July that the issues with his petition forms were his fault and an “innocent mistake.”
Reached for comment Thursday about the charge against Greenway, Amber Reed, his opponent in the November election, said, “I’m very disappointed that Mr. Greenway did not follow the law.”
In her May letter to Greenway, Cloeter said she had processed petition signatures when he ran for the school board in 2017 and 2021 and when he ran for the county board of supervisors in the primary in June 2024.
Cloeter said Thursday that 817 ballots had been cast in the Vinton Magisterial District since early voting began Sept. 22.
The district has about 14,000 registered voters as of Oct. 1, according to state Department of Elections data.