COLUMBIA, S.C. — Accused child sex material distributor former South Carolina House Rep. RJ May III, a Republican, has said he will plead guilty.

May, 38, the married father of two young children, has agreed to plead guilty to five counts of distributing child pornography on the internet, according to an eight-page plea agreement on the federal court public records database.

A hearing before U.S. Judge Cameron McGowan Currie will be held Monday at 2 p.m. in the federal courthouse in Columbia. At that hearing, May is scheduled to enter a formal plea of guilty, nullifying his earlier plea of not guilty.

May had been expected to go to trial Oct. 8.

May, who was once an outspoken hard-right Republican legislative leader, will not be sentenced for two or three months.

Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

After he finishes his prison term, he will be required to register as a sex offender, according to his plea agreement.

May was snared in 2024 in a digital trap by law enforcement agents who hunt for people who distribute child pornography on the internet. Digital trails in the accounts May had opened and used led agents to his house and cellphone.

May was originally indicted on 10 counts of distributing child sex abuse material, also known as child pornography.

In his plea agreement, May admits that he knowingly distributed child sex abuse material

The document was signed Wednesday by May following a pretrial hearing in his case before Judge Currie.

Before he signed the plea agreement, May had filed motions to suppress evidence found by Homeland Security Investigations agents in his cellphone and at his residence. He was also seeking a change in venue from Columbia to be tried in a different part of the state.

Since Sept. 4, May has been acting as his own attorney, forsaking having taxpayer-supported public defenders in charge of his defense.

Instead, May — who had access to legal cases on a computer in his jail cell at Edgefield County Detention Center — drew up handwritten motions and argued them himself. Two public defenders — Jenny Smith and Jeremy Thompson — sat at the table with him, giving him advice on procedural matters.

Federal prosecutors signed the plea agreement Friday, Sept. 26. Prosecutors on the case are Scott Matthews, Elliott Daniels and Austin Berry.

May’s trial would likely have attracted widespread attention. It would have pitted a flamboyant conservative representing himself against three savvy federal prosecutors and featured graphic videos depicting toddlers and children being sexually violated by adults. A central feature of the trial would have been testimony from law enforcement revealing the detective story of how May was tracked down through technology.

May was elected to the State House three times out of Lexington County.

He was a co-founder of the hard-line conservative group known as the S.C. House Freedom Caucus and often served as a spokesman for the group. He also ran a political consulting business called Ivory Tusk.

During his first two terms he was an outspoken member on the floor.

But in August 2024, after a four-month investigation of May’s internet activity in which he opened an account on the social media platform Kik and filled it with child porn videos that he distributed to others, Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a search warrant on May’s house.

Although no specific charges were filed against May at that time, the search itself made news. It later became known that federal authorities had seized electronic equipment at May’s house.

Although prosecutors found no child pornography on any of the devices seized at May’s house, postings on Kik led directly back to the IP addresses of one of May’s cellphones and one of his laptops. IP addresses, which can be a combination of letters and numbers, represent a specific location.

Although no reason was given Friday for May’s decision to plead guilty, it is likely that he came to realize that a jury would convict him on the basis of the digital trails that led to his laptop and cell phone.

During this year’s session that began in January, however, as speculation circulated of why his house was searched by federal law enforcement, May mostly kept to himself at the back of the House chamber.

He also had been suspended from the Freedom Caucus, but still voted along with them.

May was indicted on the child porn charges in June but did not resign from the House until August.

(Reporter Joseph Bustos contributed to this story.)

©2025 The State. Visit thestate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.