A Marion County judge will preside over the case of 55-year-old St. Clair County Circuit Judge Ron Duebbert, who is facing felony charges of intimidation and criminal sexual abuse, along with misdemeanor counts of solicitation of a sex act and battery.

Circuit Judge Michael McHaney, of Salem, was selected to hear the case.

McHaney serves in the Fourth Judicial Circuit, which covers Christian, Clay, Clinton, Effingham, Fayette, Jasper, Marion, Montgomery and Shelby counties.

Earlier this month, Duebbert was accused in charging documents of grabbing a client’s genitals when he was a lawyer and offering to reduce the man’s legal bill by $100 in exchange for sex, reaching into the man’s shorts and touching his genitals, and threatening the man if he told anyone.

At the time of the charge, St. Clair County Chief Judge Andrew Gleeson said a judge outside the five-county 20th Judicial Circuit would be brought in to hear the charges against Duebbert.

The misdemeanor counts allege that Duebbert committed battery in that he “made physical contact in an insulting or provoking nature” with the man and committed the offense of “solicitation of a sexual act,” by offering to “knock $100 off his legal bill if the man would perform an act of oral sex on the judge.”

Duebbert was ordered to appear in court Dec. 1 to answer the charges.