“Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings!” A friend with a wry sense of humor once quoted that famous line from the 1946 Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life. We were watching the news about the arrest of longtime City Family member Dwayne Jones. “What brought that up?” I asked. “Well,” he said, “in your case it’s more like ‘every time you write a column an official goes to jail.’”
He was referring to investigative reporting I’ve done about City Hall’s rampant corruption going back to 2019 that preceded FBI subpoenas, indictments, arrests, convictions, and prison sentences for former San Francisco Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Harlan Kelly Jr. As for Jones — a colleague of Kelly’s and the mentor of District 10 supervisor Shamann Walton — an October 2021 column I wrote about him is mentioned in the federal indictment which, in August 2023, charged him with 59 counts of fraud including bribery, misappropriation of public funds, and aiding and abetting a financial conflict of interests in a government contract.
After Wong treated Kelly’s family on a China vacation with comped stays in five-star hotels, and more, Kelly rewarded Wong with two key projects.
In July 2020, I wrote a column called “Friends with Community Benefits” for the Marina Times about corruption within the SFPUC related to a pay-to-play scheme called the Community Benefits Program, where joint venture boards, made up of firms bidding on large contracts, are “encouraged” to donate to favored nonprofits that benefit cronies in and around the SFPUC. Kelly, Walton, and Jones, in fact, all played roles in the elaborate plot.
My eight-month investigation also revealed an illicit arrangement between Kelly and disgraced contractor and permit expediter Walter Wong. It’s no secret that Wong did favors for a lot of city bigshots, which included Kelly and his wife, Naomi Kelly. Numerous workers inside the SFPUC told me not only did Wong do work for the power couple, but “Harlan bragged about it openly.” I discovered that the Kellys pulled three permits on their $2 million 11th Avenue home in San Francisco between 2011 and 2014. The authorized agent on each of those permits was Best Design Construction. A 2010 court case, W. Wong Construction Co., Inc. v. Watt, mentions that Wong introduced the Watts to “Charles Ng of Best Design.” Wong even used Ng’s plans to apply for a building permit on their behalf.
The FBI raided Kelly’s home in November 2020, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged him in an alleged long-running bribery scheme. While Nuru and Wong pled guilty to their crimes, Kelly chose a jury trial. In 2023, prosecutors argued that Wong gifted home repair work to Kelly at a heavy discount, from installing iron handrails in his home to fixing water damage and even installing wine cellar shelving in his basement — a room sources tell me contained incriminating evidence along with wine.
“I owe you big time!!!” Kelly wrote to Wong after the 2013 installation of that locked cellar. Wong also treated Kelly’s family during a 2016 China vacation, including a trip to a zoo, sightseeing tours, a meal between Wong and Kelly that topped $600, and comped stays in five-star hotels. Kelly rewarded Wong on two key projects he had control over: putting up holiday lights in San Francisco’s downtown, and a contract to convert existing city streetlights to use LED bulbs.
After less than two days of deliberation, a San Francisco jury convicted Kelly on six of eight charges. He was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. During the sentencing, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg said Kelly “betrayed the public trust and made a mockery of his oath to serve the community in his high public office.” Kelly is serving his term at the federal correctional institution at Leavenworth, Kan., with his release set for July of 2026.
If you thought this would quell Kelly’s arrogance, you would be wrong — Kelly is now seeking to overturn his conviction. To add insult to injury, he is now represented by Steven Kalar, a court-appointed (a.k.a. taxpayer-funded) attorney, after Kelly testified “he could no longer afford criminal defense attorney Brian Getz, who represented him in his original trial and submitted his appeal.”
On Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025, before a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Kalar returned to the argument Kelly’s team raised in an appeal lodged right after he was indicted. It’s as predictable as it is absurd. In a brief to the court, Kalar wrote:
In 2021, Kelly — a Black man — was indicted by a federal grand jury, Not a single Black person sat on this grand jury. This fact is not surprising, because the venire [jury pool] from which that grand jury was constituted suffered from dramatic underrepresentation of Black citizens.
That’s right, Kelly is pulling the race card. That, of course, has nothing to do with his indictment, or the real reason Kelly wants his conviction overturned: He doesn’t want to lose his $22,000 monthly pension. Kelly’s annual salary was $472,737, and his wife, former city administrator Naomi Kelly (who stepped down after her husband’s arrest), earned an annual salary and benefits of $371,822. That’s a mind-blowing combined total of $844,559.
While Kelly’s conviction is clear to everyone but Kelly himself, if the city of San Francisco is smart (and that’s a big if), they will remember the reason Kelly should have been fired and lost his pension in the first place.
Part 2 will cover Kelly’s extramarital affair with a subordinate.