Todd and Julie Chrisley want to dedicate their lives to prison reform advocacy

Speaking on Fox News Channel's My View with Lara Trump, Julie said: "I have a dear friend in there who's 77 years old. And that, unless God intervenes, she's going to die in there. I mean she could be any of our grandmothers.

"There's so many young women who are young mothers who got these crazy sentences, never been in trouble in their life.

"I'm not walking away. That's something, a pledge that I've made to them and to myself."

Todd revealed the family are planning their return to reality TV, with an as-yet announced show likely to document their return to South Carolina as they build a new hotel business.

He said: "We're coming back to television. It's amazing that those that walked away from me are the first ones knocking at the door again."

Todd and Julie married in 1996 and the patriarch - who has Lindsie and Kyle from his first marriage, and Chase, 28, Savannah, 27, Grayson, 19, and Chloe, 12, with his spouse - cried himself to sleep on his first night in prison because he and his wife had never spent a night apart.

He said: "When the lights went out, I literally cried myself to sleep because it's the first time Julie and I had ever been away from each other since we had been married.

"I'd never not been in that house when my kids woke up in the morning or when they went to bed at night."

And while they couldn't contact one another behind bars, Julie was never out of her husband's thoughts.

He said: "I was never away from her because she was in my spirit the entire time.

"I thought of her every second of my day. And so, when I hugged her the first time [after being released], it was like I was home in my heart spiritually."