MORGANTOWN, W.Va. Commissioners in Monongalia County have appointed Gabrielle Mucciola as the next prosecutor. Mucciola has worked her way to the top spot after starting with the office in 2008 as a legal assistant.
“I applied, and Marcia Ashdown interviewed me, and I knew nothing about the law or prosecution,” Mucciola said. But she gave me the opportunity to work here at a really young age.”
Mucciola has worked as a law clerk and an associate attorney for a private law firm, and since 2017 she has worked with the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, becoming a recipient of the coalition’s Domestic Violence Purple Ribbon in 2019. Since 2016, she has handled felony and misdemeanor cases in the Monongalia County Prosecutor’s Office. She is also a current member of the West Virginia Strangulation Awareness Task Force.
“I’m victim-centered, and I will always attempt to notify a victim and have a conversation with a victim before moving forward on a case,” Mucciola said. “I’m always open to listening to both sides.”
Mucciola was the valedictorian of the 2007 Doddridge County High School class before moving to Morgantown to attend WVU. She earned a degree in journalism before graduating from the WVU College of Law in 2013.
“Monongalia County is home to me and has been home for a long time,” Mucciola said. “This office has been family to me for a long time, so I hope to live up to being half as much of an institution as Perri Jo DeChristopher and Marcia Ashdown.”
DeChristopher graduated from the WVU College of Law in 1994, and after a short time as a prosecutor in Harrison County, he came to Monongalia County as an assistant prosecuting attorney in 1998. In 2000, she became the chief assistant and was elected to the first of two terms as county prosecutor in 2016.
In December 2022, DeChristopher was appointed to complete the term of retiring Seventeenth Judicial Court Circuit Judge Phillip Gaujot.
“I feel like I’ve grown up really here in front of our judges as they have come and gone here in this county, and I really wasn’t ever thinking I would have an opportunity to be one of those judges, but I’m looking forward to that,” DeChristopher said.
DeChristopher believes her more than 20 years of prosecution and courtroom experience will benefit the public and those with cases before the court.
“I think it will allow the staff of the judges’ office, which will be mine, to work really seamlessly with the staff of the prosecutor’s office,” DeChristopher said.
DeChristopher will be sworn in Friday, Jan. 27 at 2:30 p.m. and will then administer the oath of office to Mucciola.