Sam Currin, a former judge, federal prosecutor and state Republican Party chairman, was ordered released from prison after serving a fraction of a nearly six-year sentence for money laundering and obstruction.

Senior U.S. District Judge W. Earl Britt made the order Monday. Federal prosecutors recommended in May that Currin, imprisoned since 2007, have his original 70-month sentence cut in half following his testimony against a co-conspirator, David A. Hagen.

Thomas Walker, one of Currin's defense attorneys, argued in court Monday that the fallen federal prosecutor and former state judge should be granted the kind of leniency he often opposed for criminals.

Walker asked the judge to reduce the sentence to 29 months to allow Currin, 60, to be home in Raleigh in time to see his son graduate from law school next year.

"He has suffered greatly," Walker said. "We're begging for the court's mercy."

Britt, who handed down Currin's original sentence and presided over the Hagen trial, went even further, commuting Currin's sentence to time served.

A Republican and close aide of the late U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, Currin served from 1981 to 1987 as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, a jurisdiction that sweeps from Raleigh to the coast. He was a Superior Court judge from 1987 to 1990 and elected as the state's GOP chairman in 1996, serving until 1999.

At his sentencing in 2007, Currin admitted to laundering $1.3 million on behalf of Hagen, an e-mail spammer who authorities said ran one of the most prolific spamming operations in the world, peddling everything from mortgages to stock picks.

Hagen was convicted in May on three counts of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit mail/wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He faces up to 45 years. (N&O)