Pleasant S. Brodnax, III

Trial advocacy anchors Pleasant S. Brodnax, III's career. Admitted to practice in 1986, he has devoted more than three decades to federal criminal defense. He represents high-level executives, entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, elected officials (including a Member of Congress), and professional athletes in federal investigations and prosecutions, with a concentration in white-collar criminal defense. From pre-indictment response through trial verdict and sentencing, he has guided clients through every stage of federal criminal litigation.

Mr. Brodnax's courtroom work spans the U.S. District Courts for the District of Columbia, the Eastern District of Virginia, the Western District of Virginia, and the District of Maryland, with appellate practice in the D.C. Circuit and the Fourth Circuit. His defense portfolio reaches bribery and gratuities charges, campaign finance matters, mail and wire fraud, healthcare fraud, procurement fraud, tax cases, and government contract prosecutions. Before entering private practice in 1991, he served as an Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia and later as a staff attorney enforcing export-control laws at the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Export Administration (now the Bureau of Industry and Security), an earlier chapter of public service that continues to inform his work on international trade and export-control matters.

Peer and editorial recognition for Mr. Brodnax includes selection to The Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers, and Washingtonian Magazine's list of top attorneys.

The most significant recognition in his career came in 2008, when he was inducted as a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, an honor limited to one percent of the trial bar in any state or province and extended only after confidential peer investigation. He is a past Chair of the College’s D.C. State Committee and currently serves as Vice-Chair of its Admission to Fellowship Committee. That record of trial-tested representation, combined with decades of sustained professional recognition, defines the work he brings to each new matter.