Former judge Patricia Coffey, who beat allegations of sleeping on the bench and then resigned for hiding her husband's assets from creditors, has been reprimanded again.

This time judicial officials say Coffey erred by collecting a private salary while she was under investigation, on leave and receiving her full judicial salary. Doing so violated three canons of judicial conduct, according to the New Hampshire Judicial Conduct Committee.

Coffey admitted the misconduct and has agreed to a public censure, according to the committee, which announced the charges yesterday.

Her attorney, Russell Hilliard, declined comment yesterday but released a letter Coffey sent to the committee in September explaining her actions. She said she didn't intend to violate judicial conduct rules and had taken steps to avoid doing so.

Coffey, of Rye, resigned as a Rockingham County Superior Court judge in April 2008 after the state Supreme Court suspended her for three months for helping hide her husband's assets from creditors. The state Professional Conduct Committee, which had investigated John Coffey for misconduct in his legal practice.

He was ultimately disbarred.

The judicial conduct charges announced yesterday date back to the state's recent investigation of Patricia Coffey.

Before she resigned last year, Coffey asked the state Supreme Court's permission to keep a temporary job with a New York law firm while she was under investigation and on paid administrative leave. Coffey was collecting her $130,620 annual salary as a judge at the time but said she needed the additional salary to keep her $627,100 house in Rye.

Judges cannot earn more than 15 percent of their judicial salary from another job without special permission from court, and the court rejected Coffey's request in April. But what wasn't revealed until yesterday was that judicial officials began investigating Coffey for taking the second job after all.

The state's Judicial Conduct Committee concluded that Coffey had violated conduct rules by working at a private law firm while being employed as a judge. Private work, the rules state, must contribute to the improvement of law or the legal profession. Even though Coffey had been sorting documents and not working as a lawyer, the committee found the work violated conduct rules.

The committee also concluded that Coffey's request to exceed the 15 percent cap on her second income was "conduct unlikely to promote confidence and integrity of the judiciary." The committee filed formal charges against Coffey but did not make them public.

Coffey agreed to the committee's conclusions late last month and agreed to be publicly censured as punishment. She also explained her decision to take the job to the conduct committee.

Coffey had consulted Hilliard before she took the New York job and had been careful not to accept legal work, her attorney told the committee. She had not been hired directly by the firm but instead had been placed by an employment agency and was being paid by that agency.

Coffey and Hilliard did not think the work would be inappropriate because there was no way it could interfere with her judicial practice in New Hampshire.

Nor did they think the work would reflect poorly on the judiciary. They were so sure the work was appropriate that they asked the state Supreme Court to let Coffey keep it after her wages approached the 15 percent cap.