Bryant J Spann

After completing his second Fourth Circuit clerkship, Mr. Spann honed his trial skills as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia. As a federal prosecutor, he successfully tried a wide variety of criminal cases to verdict, including a six-week trial culminating in the conviction of banking officials responsible for a half-billion-dollar bank failure. He was also first chair in one of the nation’s first successful prosecutions of an anthrax hoax.

Bryant joined AG&T in 2002, and he has since focused on defending product liability cases and financial litigation. For the past several years, Mr. Spann has served on 3M Company’s national trial team in connection with its defense of mask and respirator cases. In this role, he has appeared in cases pending from West Virginia to Hawai’i. Bryant also maintains an active federal criminal defense practice, representing corporate and individual defendants in financial fraud, taxation, public corruption, and other serious matters. Mr. Spann has repeatedly been hand-selected by federal judges to represent criminal defendants and habeas petitioners in especially complex cases.

Bryant was honored to be ranked as “Up and Coming” by Chambers & Partners in 2007, 2008, and 2009, he was also the youngest trial lawyer in West Virginia to receive an individual profile in Chambers. He currently serves on AG&T’s executive committee.  Bryant is a member of the International Association of Defense Counsel and The Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference.

• Washington & Lee University, B.A., summa cum laude, 1991;
• Fulbright Scholarship (Germany), 1991-92;
• University of Georgia School of Law, J.D., magna cum laude, 1995;
  • Editor-in-Chief, Georgia Law Review 1994-95
• Law clerk, Hon. J. Dickson Phillips, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 1995-96;
• Law clerk, Hon. Robert B. King, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 1998-99;
• Assistant United States Attorney, Southern District of West Virginia, 1999-2002;
• Admitted in both West Virginia and Kentucky.
• Allen Guthrie & Thomas, 2002 to present; member since 2004.