After blasting Maureen McDonnell from the stand, the man who once led Robert F. McDonnell’s political action committee gave much more flattering testimony about the former governor.

“He’s the least materialistic person I know,” Phil Cox said.

Under cross-examination by one of the governor’s defense lawyers, Cox said Bob McDonnell was only engaged in “constituent service” and “donor maintenance” when he sent Williams e-mails about Star and its stock price.

“Stock going great,” Bob McDonnell wrote in one message to Williams. “Alzheimer’s announcement really helped. That’s for coming to Romney event. Gov.”

Defense attorney John Brownlee suggested that e-mail was the sort of routine follow-up the governor would make with any voter or political donor. He compared his message to what the governor might do for someone who called into his monthly “Meet the Governor” radio show with a problem or concern, when he might say, “We’ll get your name and number and we’ll get back to you.”

Cox agreed and also said it was “very common” for governors to arrange for supporters to meet with state Cabinet officials.

Not long before, Cox had testified about how Maureen McDonnell had lambasted him for raising questions about the propriety of her accepting an Oscar de la Renta gown from Williams for her husband’s inauguration. He recalled an angry e-mail she fired off on Dec. 24, 2009, after he’d said he was not sure the gift would be legal. He had also warned that the optics of wearing a $20,000 to $30,000 designer gown in the midst of a deep recession would not be good.

“It was sort of an insane rant of an e-mail and coming on Christams Eve, it angered me,” he said of the first lady’s message.

Cox said that Williams lent McDonnell’s Opportunity Virginia PAC his plane four times, and he publicly disclosed those flights as in-kind contributions worth a total of $79,000.

Brownlee showed Cox a 2012 e-mail from Monica Block, the governor’s scheduler. Block was alerting Cox that Williams had changed some travel plans and that his plane would be available to the governor for some unspecified trip.

Cox asked Block in an e-mail if Williams was doing any business with the state. He said on the stand that he’d asked because under a fairly new law, the PAC could not accept the use of the plane if it was owned by someone who was doing business with the state or seeking to do so.

Brownlee suggested that in raising that question, Cox was doing exactly what Bob McDonnell would have wanted him to do: making sure he was following the law.