Todd and Julie Chrisley file $25M lawsuit against Atlanta lawyer

Instead, the criminal case went to trial and a dozen jurors unanimously found the Chrisleys guilty of every charge they faced in relation to a $36 million bank fraud scheme and tax evasion. Todd and Julie Chrisley were sentenced in late 2022 to 12 and seven years in prison, respectively, and ordered to pay more than $17 million in restitution.

“A lawyer with actual criminal defense competence, supervised by a firm that took its professional obligations seriously, would never have let this happen,” the Chrisleys said in their complaint.

The Tennessee-based couple said their convictions and prison sentences cost them more than $25 million in lost income from their television show and endorsement deals, adding their reputations were destroyed.

Attorneys for Anulewicz and Balch & Bingham, where Anulewicz worked for almost 20 years, declined to comment Monday because the case is pending, noting the defendants haven’t been served yet with a copy of the lawsuit.

The Chrisleys’ current attorneys also declined to comment Monday.

Anulewicz was a partner at Balch & Bingham when he left in 2023 to join his current firm, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, according to his online profile.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Court filings show he was one of 10 criminal defense attorneys of record for the Chrisleys, from several different firms.

The Chrisleys were indicted in August 2019 but Anulewicz did not join their defense team until March 2022, less than two months before trial. He withdrew from the case in August 2024, after the Chrisleys lost their appeal to overturn their convictions.

In their lawsuit, the Chrisleys said Anulewicz wasn’t an experienced criminal defense attorney but wanted the notoriety the case would bring, and Balch & Bingham let him take the lead. The Chrisleys alleged Anulewicz’ malpractice included persuading them to invest $75,000 in his brother-in-law’s startup food truck business when he should have been focusing on their defense.

“The result of defendants’ conduct was a catastrophic, unforced error that sent two people to federal prison for crimes they would never have been convicted of had their lawyers done their jobs,” the Chrisleys said in their complaint.

The couple claimed Anulewicz failed to timely object to federal prosecutors using evidence obtained in relation to an illegal search of their warehouse that was conducted without a warrant by the Georgia Department of Revenue.

“That illegal search launched the entire federal case,” the Chrisleys said. “Virtually every document the government used at trial traced back to it.”

The Chrisleys said federal prosecutors were able to obtain emails, bank records and financial documents because of what they learned from the search, and that Anulewicz was unreasonably late in his attempt to suppress that evidence.

U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross rejected the suppression request as untimely, and that decision was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit when it upheld the Chrisleys’ convictions in June 2024.

In its ruling, the 11th Circuit said the Georgia Department of Revenue improperly seized documents from the Chrisleys’ warehouse in March 2017 without a warrant, and that federal agents later got a warrant allowing them to seize those documents from the state agency.

The Chrisleys first tried to suppress evidence tied to the warehouse search in late 2019 and early 2020, long before Anulewicz was on the case, court filings show. Some evidence was suppressed and some wasn’t.

The Chrisleys said they have spent millions of dollars trying to fix the harm flowing from their convictions. They claim Anulewicz and Balch & Bingham are liable for legal malpractice and breach of contract.