Karen Huger, a cast member on Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Potomac,” was sentenced Wednesday to two years in jail, with one year suspended, after a jury found her guilty of several charges relating to a DUI incident in March 2024.

Huger, who has 30 days to file an appeal, will also pay $2,900 in total fines and cannot drive a car for one year after her release.

“The defendant’s four drunk driving offenses have spanned a 17-year period,” said Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Terrence J. McGann, referring to three prior traffic cases Huger faced between 2006 and 2011. “Can we believe that she’s only driven while intoxicated four times in the last 17 years, or is it more likely that she’s been very lucky and her inebriation has gone undetected?”

Huger, 61, was convicted in December of seven of eight charges prosecutors brought against her relating to last year’s DUI, including driving under the influence, negligent driving, failure to control her vehicle’s speed to avoid a collision and failure to notify authorities of a change in address. She was acquitted of reckless driving.

“I understand better the brutal clarity of the fact that when you’re behind a car driving you’re not just driving for yourself,” a visibly emotional Huger told McGann at her sentencing, which was standing room only. “It’s my responsibility to make sure that my community members make it where they need to be safely.”

Body camera footage taken in the police station last March shows Huger refusing to use a breathalyzer, though she did earlier say to an officer, “Oh God, I’m lit.”

In later footage, Huger slurs her words. “I’m really rich and I will stay in jail for a year or two,” she says. “I am Thomas Jefferson’s concubine.”

Huger wrote letters of “thanks and apologies” to the officers she interacted with during the incident, according to her defense attorney David Martella.

“The body cameras definitely prove that they were right and I was wrong,” Huger said at her sentencing. “I should’ve handled the situation differently.”

But McGann was not convinced.

“If while driving drunk, Karen Huger had struck a child who was in that pedestrian crossing, killing that child, does anyone think that child’s parents would be consoled if told that drunk driver was a reality TV star, a good mother and had volunteered for several community projects?” McGann asked.

Martella told reporters after the sentencing that Huger said she was “at peace” with the ruling.

“She is happy this part of the process is over and happy she has gone through the recovery process,” he said. “She feels she is healthier than she has been in years.”

Huger, who will serve her time at Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Clarksburg, did not show emotion when her sentencing was revealed, though a relative collapsed to the ground and briefly wept. The reality star repeatedly looked toward her family members and mouthed that she loved them and that she was OK.

None of her “Real Housewives of Potomac” cast members appeared at the sentencing.

After being found guilty in December, Huger entered a 28-day rehab stay at a treatment center in Florida. She sought treatment for abuse of antidepressants and unresolved trauma stemming from when she was raped as a student at the University of Virginia, Martella said.

Huger went through withdrawals from her antidepressant medication while at rehab, waking up on the fourth day “soaked in sweat,” according to Martella. Huger also completed a weekend stay at Right Turn Impact Center, which replicates a jail with counseling and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, her lawyer said. He added that she also uses a hand-held breathalyzer multiple times a day.

Prosecutor Jordan Kramer said the rehab center Huger stayed at was akin to a “luxury four- to five-star hotel experience” and questioned why “she didn’t do anything to rehabilitate herself until after the guilty verdict came down.”

Huger’s husband, Raymond, said she would’ve entered the center earlier, but was busy filming Season 9 of “The Real Housewives of Potomac.” While at rehab, Huger missed the taping of the show’s reunion.

That didn’t stop her cast mates from discussing the incident, however.

“I do find it interesting that she’s doing it before her sentencing,” Wendy Osefo said of her co-star’s stint in rehab. “I’m wondering, is she doing it because she feels like she needs help? Or is she doing it because she feels like it will lighten the blow of the sentence?”

Fellow stars Mia Thornton and Gizelle Bryant agreed that Huger went to rehab to lighten her sentence.

“Anybody would,” said Bryant, a friend of Huger.

“I can’t knock the hustle,” Osefo responded, prompting agreement from Andy Cohen, the reunion’s host and a producer of the show. “I would, too.”

Though she wasn’t physically present, Huger did make a video that was shown at the reunion. Huger’s video was taped Dec. 27, eight days after she was found guilty.

“I plan to be coming back as Karen Huger only,” she said, shedding her “Grand Dame” nickname and hinting at a return to the reality TV series. “Because Karen is enough.”