BATON ROUGE — A federal judge has sentenced a longtime lawyer and lobbyist to five years in prison after he pleaded guilty to possessing more than 550 images of child pornography.

James Burland, 70, must also pay $5,000 under the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act and register as a sex offender, federal court records say.

After Burland's Spanish Town home was raided in April 2024, authorities determined that he had possessed child pornography depicting children under 12 years old dating back to November 2022.

The court said authorities found 565 images of child porn, adding that Burland uploaded child porn to an internet-based cloud storage account. A subsequent investigation showed that Burland had at least 173 additional files containing images of child pornography in his account and on personal devices.

Burland, who lobbied lawmakers for the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, pleaded guilty in December 2024 and was indefinitely suspended from practicing law by the state Supreme Court a month later.

Burland made a deal with prosecutors to have the charges handled directly by them without going before a grand jury.