Gary Farha

Gary Farha died on the afternoon of Tuesday 13 October 2026 at Blessing Hospital in Quincy, where he had been a patient for several days. He was 68. The cause of his death has not been made public.

Adams County Board Chair Bret Austin announced the death at that evening's board meeting and asked for a moment of silence. "Gary cut a big path, volunteered for a lot of things, hardly ever said no to anything that people ask him to do, and he will be sorely missed," Austin said. At the Quincy City Council meeting the same night, Alderman Jeff Bergman offered condolences to the family and to former alderman Mike Farha, "who lost his brother."

State's Attorney Todd Eyler said: "Gary was a colleague and a mentor, but more importantly to me, he was my friend. He had a heart of gold, and he would do anything he could for others in need." Kent Snider, who had spoken to Farha by phone shortly before he died, said, "He always believed that everyone deserved a second chance." Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of the first reports.

Gary Farha was born in 1958 and grew up in Quincy, Illinois, near 10th and Cherry streets on the city's north side. He graduated from Quincy High School in 1976.

As a young man he expected to become a physician, but he later said there was nothing in the science field that he truly loved. His results on tests kept pointing him toward the law, and a teacher told him he should become a lawyer. "It was just something I was naturally good at interested in," he recalled in 2024.

He attended Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri, and then the University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia. Before law school he interned with the public defender's office at the Adams County Courthouse. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1984.

Farha began his career in Quincy, opening a practice in 1984 and serving as an associate public defender in Adams County from 1985 to 1988. He later said he grew tired of representing clients who were rarely grateful. In 1988 he moved into private practice, working with Tom Leeper in the firm of Leeper and Farha.

In July 1995 State's Attorney Barney Bier hired him as a part-time assistant state's attorney. He handled traffic court for about two years, and around the turn of the century, as drug cases became more common, he was assigned to the drug task force. "I loved it, it didn't seem like work, it was where I was supposed to be," he said. Among the cases he remembered best was the 2002 prosecution of an uncle and nephew who had sold cocaine from a house a few blocks from where he grew up; both received long prison sentences. In January 2006 State's Attorney Jon Barnard promoted him to first assistant state's attorney.

Farha won the Republican primary for Adams County state's attorney in 2016 and took office in December 2016, succeeding Barnard. He was re-elected without opposition in 2020. His time in charge included hard decisions, among them a 2023 decision to drop murder charges against a Quincy man because of the cost of his continued hospital care in custody, and the announcement that a grand jury had declined to bring charges in a 2023 police shooting.

He was proud of the staff he built. Josh Jones, a prosecutor in his office, became an associate judge in the Eighth Judicial Circuit in 2024, and his longtime first assistant, Todd Eyler, whom he openly endorsed, was elected unopposed to succeed him that November. Farha's last day in office was the day before Thanksgiving 2024.

Farha spent most of his life in Quincy. His brother, Mike Farha, served on the Quincy City Council.

He was a member of the Quincy Exchange Club and helped choose recipients of its Book of Golden Deeds award for community service. On retiring at 66 he joked that he would do "what I do best, which is nothing," but he remained busy with the Adams County Bicentennial Commission and planned to join the board of Friends of Justice. "I do think that I can utilize my friendships with people to raise funds and continue to do good. That is my overwhelming desire," he said. Former County Board Chairman Kent Snider said Farha started the county's 250th anniversary celebration and was generous with both his time and his money.

Farha's career spanned nearly every side of the criminal courts in Adams County, from defending clients as a public defender to leading the office that prosecutes them. Colleagues remembered him less for individual cases than for the prosecutors he mentored, several of whom went on to the bench or to lead the office themselves.

In Quincy he was also remembered as a tireless volunteer, particularly for the Adams County bicentennial, and as someone who, in Bret Austin's words, was "a good example of having an impact when you lean into things and say yes instead of no."