Judge sentences West Columbia family doctor to 5 years in prison for drug dealing

A respected West Columbia family doctor who was a major source of illegal prescription drugs locally was sentenced to five years in federal prison on Tuesday.

Judge Joe Anderson sentenced James “Jimmy” Oscar Williams, 60, who recently surrendered his medical license, in a hearing at the Matthew Perry federal courthouse in Columbia.

In a plea deal, prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to two counts of illegal drug distribution in exchange for his guilty plea and the agreed-upon five year prison sentence.

Williams had for years written prescriptions for large quantities of controlled substance drugs including oxycodone, adderall, Xanax and hydrocodone, for a Columbia area married couple, David and Jennifer Mozingo, so they could buy the drugs at local drug stores, according to evidence in his case. David Mozingo then resold the drugs.

Earlier this year, David Mozingo was sentenced to nine years in prison for conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and fentanyl and using a gun in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. Mozingo had also smuggled drugs into this country from Mexico.

Jennifer Mozingo was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison on the same charges. Evidence in their case indicated she was significantly less culpable than her husband and that she had acted under his influence.

After their 2019 arrests, the Mozingos told federal authorities that Williams had made it possible for them to get tens of thousands of prescription pills over the years.

Williams attorney Greg Harris said in a Wednesday interview that all the doctor’s patients “thought highly of him. But he just had a blind spot for those two individuals (the Mozingos). And yesterday, he was held accountable for that blind spot.”

In a court hearing earlier this year, federal prosecutor Mike O’Mara said that at one point, Hawthorne Pharmacy in Columbia became concerned about the quantities of drugs that Williams was writing prescriptions for the Mozingos and began to refuse to do business with him.

Williams then turned to a hospital pharmacy run by Prisma. When Prisma began to have reservations about the quantities of drugs Williams was writing prescriptions for, the hospital pharmacy stopped allowing him to buy there, O’Mara said.

The Mozingo case was investigated by the DEA, which used informants, geolocation data from cellphones and human surveillance to gather evidence.

Williams, who graduated from Brookland-Cayce High School in 1980, graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1984 and the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia in 1988.

Over this career, he worked with Palmetto Health USC Family Medicine, AGAPE Primary Care and most recently at Senior Health Associates in West Columbia.

Williams was represented by Columbia attorneys Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris.

Letters in support of Williams filed with the court describe him as a “great mentor,” a “hands-on dad” and an active member of his church with “a very strong faith in God.”

This story was originally published August 17, 2023 at 5:00 AM.