A new magistrate judge was sworn in Monday morning at the Haines courthouse.

Kila Orion Hughes-Knowles, 32, is taking over following the Dec. 31 retirement of judge Linn Asper. Hughes-Knowles, who grew up in Sitka before attending law school in Virginia and clerking for a Fairbanks superior court judge, will preside over cases in Skagway, Hoonah and Yakutat as well as Haines, part of a judicial restructuring effort.

Hughes-Knowles has been to Haines before, during high school sports events, and when his band “The Lost Boys of Sitka,” performed at the Southeast Alaska State Fair, he sang, played clarinet and wrote songs for the band that performed all original music.

“My biggest inspiration was probably The Kinks. The Kinks, but with a clarinet, a baritone saxophone, a trumpet and some other stuff in there,” Hughes-Knowles said.

He earned a law degree from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and he interned with public defender offices in Richmond, Virginia and Sitka.

At 32 years old, Hughes-Knowles is young for a magistrate. He said he’s always wanted to work at the state level.

“Generally, the route is to clerk on the federal level but that never really interested me,” he said. “I was interested in coming back to Alaska. The federal stuff is more detached from the stuff that’s really going on with the state.”

Hughes-Knowles said, besides playing music, he enjoys golf, soccer and reading.

Asper, who served two stints as magistrate, began his first term in 1989 when he was in his 40s. Asper left for the south Pacific in 1995 and came out of retirement in 2016 to again take up the post on a part-time basis after magistrate John Hutchins retired.

“They were proposing to manage the Haines court from Yakutat with an occasional visit,” Asper said. “That didn’t feel good to me. It’s my home and it’s an important place for the courts for northern Southeast. I contacted the presiding judge and he said he’d be willing to (let me) fill the position.”

He thought it would be a six-month stint, but between budget shortfalls, expected retirements that didn’t occur and the pandemic, Asper served another three and a half years.

“We had some interesting and unusual cases. I just enjoyed working with the community, being in a town that I call home,” Asper said. “It’s a lot of responsibility, but I loved having the feeling that I was in the middle of the judicial system.”

Asper has immediate plans to visit his children and grandchildren in Iowa. He’ll return to Haines to practice law in town as a general practitioner.

Asper represented the Village of Klukwan as an attorney between 1976 and 1980 in attempts to reclaim Frog House artifacts from a Canadian art dealer. The selling of Frog and Whale House treasures led to decades-long disputes over rightful ownership. Asper described it as the first big case that shaped his career.

Asper said although having a law degree isn’t required to be a magistrate judge, it’s a trend that Haines has now followed. He said Hughes-Knowles will have a big job as he hears cases from communities outside of Haines.

“He’s got a big job, much bigger than the one I undertook,” Asper said. “He’s a young guy, enthusiastic, very qualified. I think it’ll be great.”