“This is a position that I thought about running for over many years,” Meadows said. “The opportunity became available, and I decided I would give it a shot.”

The move comes after East Lansing’s 54-B District Court Judge David Jordon announced his retirement last week. Jordon could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.

Meadows spent eight years as the city’s mayor during his decade on city council before being elected to the 69th District in 2006.

Meadows is the first candidate to enter the race so far, although he still has not filed paperwork to make his candidacy official, East Lansing Assistant City Manager and City Clerk Marie McKenna said.

A new judge will be elected in November’s election and will take office in January. District judge elections are nonpartisan, and judges serve six-year terms.

Meadows’ early departure from the Senate race leaves the Lansing seat more open, though the election still is more than two years away. If Meadows is not elected as the district judge, he still can run for the Senate seat in 2014.

“I don’t know whether it’s an easier or harder race necessarily,” said Susan Schmidt, a Democratic candidate for the 69th District House seat and Meadows’ former chief of staff. “There are all sorts of reasons why we change our trajectory, and this is an unexpected one.”

Although campaigning hasn’t started yet, representatives have their eyes on the 23rd District seat, which includes East Lansing, Lansing and more rural southern areas of Ingham County.

Meadows cannot run again for the House because of the state’s three-term limit for representatives. He had previously talked of plans to fill State Sen. Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer’s seat, as she also will be barred from running again in 2014 because of term limits.

In running for the position, Meadows is seeking to dust off his old legal hat. An alumnus of the MSU College of Law, Meadows was appointed as an assistant state attorney general in 1975 and held the position for 27 years.

During his time at the Capitol, he also served as both chair and vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

District judges in college towns such as East Lansing need to have an understanding attitude to confront certain unique challenges, food science junior Kelsey Strachan said.

“They have a large population of people who get in trouble a lot,” she said. “You can’t just throw the book down all the time.”