Brian D. Ballard

Brian D. Ballard (born 1961 or 1962) is an American lobbyist and founder of lobbying firm Ballard Partners, based in Tallahassee, Florida. Ballard began his career working for Florida governor Bob Martinez and was his chief of staff until 1990. In 1998, Ballard founded a Florida lobbying firm, Smith & Ballard, with Jim Smith, his father-in-law and former Secretary of State of Florida. The firm became Ballard Partners when Smith left in 2011.

Ballard is a major fundraiser for Republican Party political campaigns including the presidential campaigns of John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Donald Trump. In 2017, Ballard opened an office in Washington, D.C., and became among the most powerful lobbyists on K Street, representing more than a hundred corporations and several countries. With Trump's return to the White House, Ballard again gained many clients for his federal lobbying firm.

Early life and education Brian Ballard was born to Jeanne Ray, At the university, Ballard was elected student body treasurer in 1985 and was a member of the Florida Blue Key, a student leadership honor society. While at the University of Florida College of Law, Ballard clerked for a law firm based in Tampa. He finished his Juris Doctor degree through a special arrangement with the university while he worked at the Florida State Capitol. Ballard was eventually appointed as Martinez's chief of staff while still in his 20s.

In 1998, Ballard founded the lobbying firm Smith & Ballard with his father-in-law Jim Smith, former Secretary of State of Florida. Ballard became a lobbyist focused on the Florida Legislature which has short legislative sessions lasting only 60 days. As of 2011, Smith & Ballard represented nearly 100 clients, including U.S. Sugar and the city of Boca Raton, and brought in $1 million in revenue in the first quarter of that year. For years, Ballard's firm had also represented The Trump Organization in Florida.

Ballard served as the chair of the Florida finance committee for every Republican presidential candidate since the John McCain 2008 presidential campaign, including the Mitt Romney 2012 campaign. Ballard eventually supported the campaign of Donald Trump and even became a voting member of the Electoral College. Ballard told Teen Vogue that he had received more than 600 handwritten messages urging him not to vote for Trump. According to Teen Vogue, "Ballard has been friends with Trump for years, long before [Trump] got into politics." He raised funds for Trump's campaign and inaugural committee on which Ballard served as vice chairman.

Ballard's firm had offices in Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Miami, Tallahassee, Tampa, and West Palm Beach. Soon after Trump's inauguration in 2017, Ballard established an office in Washington, D.C, his firm's first outside of Florida. Among his firm's clients at the time were companies including Amazon, Dish Network, Pernod Ricard, Trulieve and Uber, as well as the government of Kosovo, and Moïse Katumbi, a politician in exile from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ballard was also named a Kennedy Center trustee in December 2020.

During the Biden administration, Ballard Partners remained among the top-20 lobbying firms in Washington but business declined during those years. The firm's lobbyists included a former Democratic congressman, Robert Wexler, who joined the firm in 2017.

By the time Trump's second presidency began, Ballard's firm had offices in about a dozen cities on three continents. According to 2025 revenue figures, Ballard Partners was the largest lobbying firm in Washington, D.C. Compared to its $19 million revenue for the previous year, the firm generated $14.3 million in the first quarter of 2025 and $34 million in the first half of the year.

From November 2024 to April 2025, the firm had gained 130 new clients. Ballard also represents BI² Technologies, a Massachusetts-based biometric technology company which won a $10 million contract with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to provide its Inmate Recognition and Identification System.