Someone From Bill’s Past Will Decide the Future of Bold & Beautiful’s Sheila!

It looks as if Bold was & Beautiful‘s Sheila will finally have her day in court. And when that happens, someone very familiar to both viewers and Sheila’s staunchest advocate — Bill — will be presiding over the action: Look for Joe Lando to step back into the recurring role of Judge Craig McMullen, according to SOD.

We should have expected this announcement might be coming given that only a few short weeks ago, Lando was on hand to help the Bold & Beautiful cast celebrate the holidays. (Check out pictures of the event here.)

Fans will recall that a few years back, it was Judge McMullen who was assigned to handle the custody battle Katie and Bill were having over their young son, Will. Although the judge was widely thought of as an upstanding guy — to the point that Bill and Justin assumed he couldn’t be bought off — things got interesting when it was revealed that McMullen had a connection to Ridge!

As it turned out, Ridge had helped pay off McMullen’s law school debts, putting him firmly in the designer’s debt. Taking full advantage of that fact, Ridge ordered the judge to rule in Katie’s favor. Although reluctant to do so — more because of the ethics than Katie’s ability to be a good mom — the judge did hand custody of Will over to her. (Helping make Katie’s case? The fact that she and Thorne ran off and got married just before the hearing began, thus allowing them to present themselves as a better option than her single ex-husband, Bill.)

Although Bill eventually realized what Ridge had done, he opted not to press charges against either him or the judge in exchange for a better custody arrangement, which Katie happily provided.

Now, Lando will return as McMullen beginning Monday, January 9, leaving us to wonder if his past connection to Bill will come into play. Given that Bill has been threatening to jail Taylor for having shot him, could the publishing magnate play a similar game with the judge by promising to reveal his past dirty dealings with Ridge unless Sheila is set free?

Bold & Beautiful has also cast a familiar face as Sheila’s lawyer, who will be joining the tense courtroom scenes.

Longtime daytime fans will recall that Lando played Llanview hunk Jake Harrison from 1990-92 on One Life to Live. And he’s perhaps best known to TV lovers as Byron Sully, the eventually hubby of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, a part he played from 1993-98.

Check out this gallery in which we get a much better look at some of daytime’s handsomest men. (Ice for cooling down afterwards not included!)