and 
The Bexar County District Attorney's Office took its investigation into a grand jury meeting Thursday morning and emerged with two indictments of five counts each, one naming Connolly and the other naming his business, Connolly & Company.
The indictments stemmed from his work on behalf of a Bexar Metropolitan Water District board candidate, Blanche Atkinson. Connolly funneled contributions to Atkinson through his employees, the indictment alleges.
Connolly turned himself in late Thursday afternoon.
Thursday's indictments mark the first public development since investigators carted computers and boxes of documents from Connolly's Broadway office in late August.
Connolly had expected the indictment naming him to be for a misdemeanor. He took the unusual step of sending media representatives a late-night e-mail on Wednesday describing an indictment on a Class A misdemeanor for himself and a felony indictment for Connolly & Company.
On Thursday he said, "The disadvantage I'm at is I've not had a chance to review the document. My attorney hasn't either."
Connolly's lawyer, Adam Cortez, did not return telephone calls.
Less than two months into the investigation, Connolly's wife, Patsy Connolly, committed suicide.
"This pales in comparison to losing my wife," Connolly said of the indictments. "But I want to make this perfectly clear: I'm not hiding behind tragedy. As I said in my statement, I accept personal responsibility. ... This has been the worst six months of my life, but I'm not making excuses."
"It is my sincere hope that in the weeks ahead we are able to come to a resolution of all this," he added.
District Attorney Susan Reed said that while one of the indictments names Connolly's business, "he is substantially his business."
"It's like being a party," Reed said. "He's a party to his corporation."
Under the election code, a person is forbidden from donating in the name of another person, Reed said, and an employee of Connolly & Company was showing up as a contributor, when in fact the money was coming out of other accounts.
"That was, coincidentally, the same time the Bexar Met board elected to increase his compensation," Reed said.Connolly's felony indictments also caught County Judge Nelson Wolff by surprise — he, too, had expected Connolly to get hit with the Class A misdemeanor.
"T.J. has always lived on the edge of a cliff," Wolff said. "He might have gone over the edge. But you never really know. The whole thing needs to play itself out."
When he served as San Antonio mayor, Wolff trusted Connolly enough to appoint him board chairman of VIA Metropolitan Transit in 1995. Connolly's job was to bring order to an agency roiled by fiscal problems and accusations of racism and a sexual harassment scandal.
But Connolly's unbridled PR work last year for the Bexar Metropolitan Water District — in which he repeatedly accused Wolff and state Rep. Robert Puente of looking to hand over the agency to the San Antonio Water System — cooled their relationship.
"There were a lot of hard feelings," Wolff said.
Wolff said the only time he has talked to Connolly in months was when he called to offer his condolences. Over the holidays, Wolff said he got an e-mail from Connolly "expressing apology for his conduct in the past."
The county judge said he didn't respond.
