TAMPA — Not all that long ago, Pam Bondi still walked the dour hallways of Hillsborough County’s Courthouse Annex and stood before Tampa judges and juries. Now, the hometown Tampa lawyer is poised to become the nation’s top law enforcement official.

President-elect Donald Trump last week named Bondi as his second choice to be America’s attorney general, after his first pick, Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration.

Bondi’s ascent into the political stratosphere has many in Tampa’s legal community reminiscing about the young lawyer they knew.

Before she was a MAGA star, before she became a Fox News commentator, before the fight against pill mills and human trafficking and the political controversies that dogged her eight years as Florida’s attorney general, Bondi was a telegenic homicide prosecutor known for her charm, intelligence and empathy.

Bondi’s Tampa roots

Pamela Jo Bondi was born in 1965 to an old Tampa family that dabbled in local politics. Her father, Joseph Bondi, was a college professor and school administrator who in the 1970s served as a city council member and mayor of Temple Terrace.

She earned A’s and worked the student council at C. Leon King High School. She graduated in 1983 and studied criminal justice at the University of Florida before earning a law degree from the Stetson University College of Law.

Bondi met the late Hillsborough State Attorney Bill James through her church. He recruited her for an internship in his office while she was still in law school. She did four jury trials as an intern.

“I never wanted to do anything else,” she told the St. Petersburg Times years later.

She passed the Florida Bar in 1991 and was hired as a full-time prosecutor in James’ office shortly thereafter.

“What an ingenue!” someone wrote in notes from her job interview.

“She’s got an engaging personality,” said Paul Sisco, a defense attorney who worked alongside Bondi as a prosecutor. “The likability factor is very high with her. ... In the early days, I can’t say I envisioned her as a politician or someone in national public office. But we were all in our 20s, so nobody did.”

Bondi started in the office’s county court divisions, working drunken driving cases, domestic violence and misdemeanor drug crimes.

“Pam, in my experience, was just always relentless, smart, thoughtful, empathetic with victims,” said Tampa attorney Ron Hanes, who was the chief in her division at the time. “She truly embraced the law and order in the role of a prosecutor and, in my opinion, still does.”

It wasn’t long before Bondi worked her way into the office’s felony divisions. In the mid-1990s, she routinely asked juries to convict robbers and murderers. In some cases, she worked to help send defendants to the electric chair.

“Juries absolutely loved Pam,” said Nick Cox, the statewide prosecutor. He was Bondi’s boss in the 1990s and later worked for her when she became Florida’s attorney general.

During one trial the pair handled together, Cox recalled bickering with Bondi over a question she asked a witness. As Cox scolded her, Bondi whispered that their muted argument was making the jurors mad.

“No. 2 is glaring at you,” he recalled her saying. “Put your hand on my shoulder. We’ll both laugh, it will be fine and you can yell at me later.”

Building a name

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Bondi was at the center of some of the office’s high-profile cases. She prosecuted Valessa Robinson and Adam Davis, two teens convicted in the vicious murder of Robinson’s mother.

She prosecuted former Major League Baseball pitcher Dwight Gooden, a fellow Tampa native, on drug and probation violation charges.

By the time Mark Ober became state attorney in 2001, Bondi had established herself as a leader capable of interfacing with the public. She gained attention as Ober’s designated media spokesperson.

“Once they see how articulate she is, how knowledgeable she is, the news stations compete for her presence,” Ober later told the St. Petersburg Times.

She became something of a socialite, popping up at parties around Tampa. She was married and divorced twice.

By 2007, Bondi was a regular guest on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and other networks, delivering a law enforcement perspective on high-profile cases. She weighed in on stories from outside Florida, like the JonBenet Ramsey murder and the false rape allegations against members of the Duke University lacrosse team.

About that same time, she was immersed in the case of Martin Lee Anderson, a teenage boy who died in a North Florida boot camp. Seven drill instructors and a nurse were charged in his death. Bondi was part of a team specially tapped to prosecute the case. A trial ended in acquittals. But it was yet another that made her a familiar face.

Unwanted attention

In that same era, Bondi’s image suffered after a legal battle erupted over a dog.

The St. Bernard known as Master Tank was displaced after Hurricane Katrina and later adopted by Bondi. She renamed the dog Noah. When his original owners learned he was alive and asked for him back, Bondi refused. She hired the late Tampa legal titan Barry Cohen to represent her in the dispute. She ended up settling with the owners and returning the dog.

It wasn’t uncommon for people to comment on the blond-haired, blue-eyed prosecutor’s looks. During the Anderson trial, an anonymous reader left a comment on a North Florida newspaper’s coverage of the case.

“Although I don’t necessarily agree with the prosecution of the boot camp guards,” it read, “one thing that I agree with is that Pam Bondi is the all-time hottie of all the prosecutors on the planet.”

In 2008, some less-than-discerning court observers confused Bondi with the teacher-turned-sex offender Debra LaFave. Bondi wasn’t pleased with the mistaken identity.

Bondi’s image and status as a public figure have occasionally brought her unwanted attention.

A man Bondi prosecuted on a worthless check charge during her first year as a prosecutor started stalking her, making repeated harassing phone calls. The man later died by suicide after leaping from the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

Years later, after Bondi became Florida’s attorney general, a man sent her Facebook messages commenting on her looks and later showed up repeatedly outside her Tampa home. That man was arrested and given a court order to stay away from Bondi.

Entering politics

Bondi’s entry into politics started with a phone call in 2009 in a Baltimore parking lot.

Adam Goodman, a media consultant whose past clients included ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, had followed Bondi’s career. He called her up and suggested she should consider a run for Florida’s attorney general. Bondi wrestled with the decision, but eventually entered the open race.

In her first campaign, she sometimes struggled to articulate positions on political issues, like gay adoption. She benefited, though, from a familiarity she’d honed with Republican voters as a familiar face on Fox News. She beat out two other candidates in the primary and went on to beat a well-liked Democrat in the general election.

Even then, there came speculation about what could follow for Bondi. Those who knew her insisted that Florida’s attorney general was all she wanted to be.

“To her, being attorney general of Florida is akin to being president of the United States,” Goodman told the Times in 2010. “This is as big as it gets.”