As a young attorney with Rogers Towers, Adam Brandon often travels across the state handling construction and bank cases, breach-of-contract and employment disputes.
He’s more of a generalist than anything right now.
Brandon, 34, said there’s been a learning curve to being a private litigator and to business law in general.
Any issue that may pop up, however, will pale in comparison to his past legal experience.
“Whatever situation I run into here, it’s never going to be like it was there,” he said.
“There” isn’t in Florida. It’s not even the U.S. “There” is a world away in Iraq.
Lt. Adam Brandon spent six months of his U.S. Naval career in the Middle Eastern country prosecuting more than 130 terrorists and working with an Iraqi judicial system that significantly differs from that of the U.S.
Different language, different rules, different customs — he navigated it to such a level he was called “exceptional” and “most successful” during his time supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
His military legal career covered time across the Midwest and Jacksonville, too, before he went to the private side he always envisioned pursuing.
Private practice is where his heart is now. Before that, though, he felt the need to serve.
Becoming a lawyer
Brandon grew up in Atlanta in a family void of attorneys. His mother was a teacher before staying home with him and his younger siblings. His father is a senior field technician with Verizon.
He did have some military roots, though. His grandfather was a doctor in the army who went to the Pacific in World War II.
When Brandon graduated from Wheaton College in 2004, he looked around and realized his ROTC friends were in Iraq and Afghanistan during a time of terrorist-induced turmoil.
He decided he should also serve his country that was in conflict — a value he said he inherited from his grandfather.
Brandon attended law school at the University of Notre Dame before going to the Naval Justice School and graduating with honors in 2008.
He served the country stateside for close to three years, traveling the Midwest as a legal assistance attorney defending sailors and Marines facing charges of sexual assault, drug use, misconduct and other counts.
During that period he defended 12 people facing court martials and 100 others facing possible disciplinary sanctions from administrative boards.
That work was broken up in September 2009, when Brandon headed to a place far away from the Midwest.
His service was needed in the International Zone of Baghdad, Iraq, as an officer to the central criminal court of the country.
Serving in Iraq
Brandon wasn’t too nervous about the assignment.
He joined the Navy when the country was in the midst of the War on Terror — it’s what he had signed up to do.
Yet, a week before he arrived, a friend in the office he was to serve almost lost a leg after an improvised explosive device detonated during a transport.
Brandon and others in that position stayed in the Green Zone except when they traveled to the Red Zone, where the Iraqi courthouses were located.
Those pillars of law were heavily guarded as detainees consistently were brought in to stand trial. Security was tight. Brandon said he remembers one guard telling him he loved Americans. He went on to say he was a former detainee, which made Brandon think twice for a moment.
“Suddenly, this person is responsible for courthouse security,” he said with a smile. “I thought, ’I sure hope that we treated you well.’”
Americans did handle Iraqi detainees well, Brandon said. One could always tell the difference between the ones brought in by Iraqis and Americans.
The Iraqi legal system is based on the inquisitorial approach inherited from the French, not like the U.S. platform of a prosecution and defense.
Judges were quite sensitive to Americans — or anyone for that matter — barging in and making demands. They were quick to assert their sovereignty, Brandon said, but that’s where relationship building came in.
Drinking tea together, talking about families or the like, Brandon said judges had to be comfortable with you before your cases were heard.
Investigative hearings generally started with a judge saying there was enough evidence to hold a detainee for about two weeks.
Brandon and prosecutors would then provide as much evidence as possible. Maybe it’s fingerprints from IED fragments or propaganda that was spread.
It was difficult. Iraqi judges often required two eyewitnesses, said Brandon, but those were rare. Witnesses, families and even the judges were targets.
“They’re incredible patriots,” said Brandon of the judges who didn’t even sign their name to orders.
One case Brandon was involved in resulted in 17 capital sentences after radicals beheaded a fellow detainee who wanted to speak out.
In all, Brandon prosecuted more than 130 terrorists, initiated investigative hearings against 30 insurgents and worked with Iraqi judges on more than 100 trials.
He was called an “outstanding diplomat … immensely respected … and a most successful attorney” during his time in Iraq, according to a report from a senior official.
Continuing to serve
After returning to the U.S. in April 2010, he resumed defending military personnel for a year before arriving in Jacksonville.
He took a position in the Regional Legal Service Office Southeast serving as the Command Judge Advocate for Naval Air Station Jacksonville.
It was a role that required leading a team providing legal counsel to the installation commanding office and 110 major and mid-level commands.
Installation issues included ethics, administrative law, environmental issues and a bevy of other concerns.
“You never know what you’re going to deal with,” he said of the work on installation issues.
He enjoyed the comradery, the teamwork, being on base and hearing the National Anthem every morning with a group of people serving their country. It was where he wanted to be for his two years there.
More importantly, Jacksonville was where he wanted to be.
He left active duty in April 2013 and joined Rogers Towers, which he said has a history of being a military-friendly firm in an “unbelievably military-friendly city.”
He’s based out of the firm’s Ponte Vedra office and remains in the reserves, spending a weekend a month and two weeks of the year performing his duty.
Brandon didn’t want to spend his entire career there, though. He believes everyone should serve at some point in their lives, whether it’s politics, military service of volunteering or any other way to help.
Even in his early days of law school, he wanted to be a litigator.
He just had to do his part first.
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