Biography
Chester Gallagher, 73, lead defendant in the March 5, 2021 Mt. Juliet TN reproductive-health clinic blockade by 20-25 anti-abortion protesters; 11 stayed past police dispersal warning and were charged under FACE Act. Convicted; 16 months federal prison. Pardoned by Trump January 23, 2025.
The DOJ clemency list preserved in a January 13, 2026 congressional attachment includes Chester Gallagher in the January 23, 2025 FACE Act pardons. The table lists the imposed prison term as sixteen months in Tennessee, September 26, 2024. This confirms the grant and the listed sentence, not that the full term was served or the exact day of physical release. Source: https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118833/documents/HMKP-119-JU00-20260113-SD007.pdf#page=3
Portrait provenance
Chester (Chet) Gallagher outside the Jackson Women's Health Organization. Photograph by Trip Burns, Jackson Free Press, accompanying the November 8, 2012 report Abortion Foes Eye Jackson Clinic, preserved by the Mississippi Free Press. The source caption explicitly identifies Chet Gallagher; this is an older photograph, not a photograph of his later Tennessee case. The exact day the photograph was taken is not separately specified. Original-pixel crop preserving the full cap, head and face, without upscaling, retouching or generated details.
Judgment and custody-date correction
The signed judgment in Middle District of Tennessee case 3:22-cr-00327-1, document 782, records sentence imposition on September 26, 2024 and signature/filing on October 17. Gallagher was found guilty after pleading not guilty on counts under 18 U.S.C. §241 and §248(a)(1). Sixteen months on count 1 and six months on count 2 run concurrently; the supervised-release terms are three years and one year concurrently, with a $110 assessment.
The imprisonment page leaves immediate remand unchecked and directs self-surrender before 2 p.m. on February 24, 2025 at the institution designated by the Bureau of Prisons. The executed-delivery return is blank. Neither that future reporting direction nor the Forrest City Low recommendation establishes a completed admission.
The database's earlier September 27, 2024 admission matches an earlier correction program that expressly described the Tennessee report dates as unpublished approximations, yet stored a full date without an approximation marker. The 118-day value is the elapsed-date calculation from that approximation to the existing January 23, 2025 pardon entry, not an independently documented amount of actual custody. The unsupported exact admission and derived counter are therefore withdrawn; this is not a finding that Gallagher was never jailed. No replacement admission date is inferred, and any separate Michigan custody remains unverified and is not folded into this Tennessee case. The existing later pardon/release field is not newly verified as physical discharge by this earlier judgment and is unchanged in this correction.
