A former aide to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was sentenced to ten years in prison for engaging in a sexual act with a six-year-old child.
Kevin Tomafsky, 43, admitted to paying the victim’s father, who is also under indictment. The New Jersey Globe is withholding the other defendant’s name to protect the victim’s privacy.
The former governor’s office staffer pleaded guilty to first-degree endangering the Welfare of a Child. Tomafsky, a Washington Township resident, must serve at least five years before becoming eligible for parole, and will spend the remainder of his life on the Megan’s Law list of sex offenders.
He was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Roger Lai.
An investigation into Tomafsky began in October 2022 after Snapchat reported the uploading of an incident of alleged child sexual abuse to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which was then sent to the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s office.
According to court records obtained by the New Jersey Globe, Tomafsky was identified as the original recipient of a photo of a young female engaged in oral sex with an adult after the Gloucester prosecutor’s office reviewed records supplied by Snapchat as a result of a warrant.
Detectives found multiple devices belonging to Tomafsky containing child sex materials after executing a search warrant of the Washington Township home where he lived with his mother. A forensic review determined it was Tomafsky who downloaded and transmitted the images online.
A grand jury indicted Tomafsky in July 2023, and he was arrested on August 15. Superior Court Judge Renard Scott rejected a bid by Gloucester County Assistant Prosecutor Bryant Flowers for pretrial detention, perhaps making Tomafsky the beneficiary of Christie’s bail reform initiative.
Christie hired Tomafsky to work in the governor’s office in June 2010 after spending eight years working on Republican campaigns in South Jersey, including as campaign manager for Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-Vineland). Tomafsky held a state government job, which he resigned immediately following his arrest.
Several days later, a Superior Court judge authorized a search warrant of the home Tomafsky shares with his mother. The search was conducted on December 14, 2022, and an examination of devices belonging to him revealed his possession of less than 1,000 items of child sexual abuse material.
The other individual was charged with six criminal accounts, including knowingly committing the act of sexual penetration on the six-year-old and photographing a child engaging in a sex act.
Tomafsky worked in Christie’s scheduling office, managing surrogates representing the governor at events. According to his resume, he also maintained “surrogate satisfaction charts” and tracked events that Christie attended in each county and other states.
“I am 100 percent on Team Christie, and I want to make sure that I do all that I can to serve him in the best way possible,” Tomafsky said in an email to a top Christie aide in 2013.
In 2012, at the recommendation of Christie’s office, Tomafsky was hired as a government and community relations representative at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where he worked for eleven months.
Tomafsky was the field director for Republican legislative candidates in the 1st district in 2013. He served as legislative director for Assemblyman Sam Fiocchi (R-Vineland) from 2014 to 2016. He began working on political campaigns while attending Rowan University and served as Washington Township GOP vice chairman and president of the Washington Township Republican Club. He served as South Jersey field director for then-State Sen. John Mathuessen’s campaign for U.S. Senate in the 2002 Republican primary.
Editor’s note: This reporter hired Tomafsky to work at the PANYNJ in 2012 at the direction of the Christie administration.
