A California federal judge has ordered Michael Avenatti, the brash attorney convicted of extorting millions of dollars from Nike Inc., temporarily released from a Manhattan jail due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On April 10, U.S. District Judge James Selna of the Central District of California approved Avenatti’s release for 90 days from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, after his attorneys argued that a recent bout with pneumonia had made the 49-year-old lawyer more susceptible to complications from COVID-19, the potentially deadly respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.