Justice Andrew Mahar leaves Nunavut for N.W.T.

Justice Andrew Mahar is leaving Nunavut for the N.W.T.

Mahar will become a judge on the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories, outgoing federal justice minister Peter MacKay announced Friday.

Mahar replaces Justice Virginia Schuler, who resigned May 1.

Before he was named a judge of the Nunavut Court of Justice in 2012, Mahar worked as a defence lawyer in Iqaluit for more than a decade. He worked as a lawyer in Yellowknife from 1997 to 2001. Before that, Mahar ran the Kitikmeot Law Centre in Cambridge Bay from 1994 until 1997. He also practiced criminal law in Toronto in the early 1990s.

Schuler had served as the N.W.T. Supreme Court's senior judge since 2011.

There was no immediate word on Mahar's replacement on the Nunavut bench.