Pat Brady

Pat Brady is the former chairman for the Illinois Republican Party, and a former federal and state prosecutor. Brady became the chairman in 2009 when Andrew McKenna resigned to run for governor.

Career

Prosecutor Brady graduated from law school in 1987 and joined the Cook County State's Attorney's Office as a prosecutor. He later served as an Assistant United States Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., where he focused on white-collar financial crimes and public corruption cases, before returning to the Cook County office for a second stint. His two periods of prosecutorial service totaled nearly ten years.

In an interview on the Fox 32 Chicago show Wearing the Badge, Brady spoke about the money-laundering dimension of his white-collar work. He said that after 1990s federal sentencing guidelines increased the severity of money-laundering charges, he added money-laundering counts to white-collar crime cases to increase sentencing exposure for defendants.

Support for gay marriage and resignation In January 2013, after a tough 2012 election cycle for Republicans, Brady, citing the conservative principles of freedom and belief in the family structure, encouraged Republican members of the Illinois General Assembly to support proposed same-sex marriage legislation. Although he claimed to be urging support of same-sex marriage as a citizen only, and not in his official role as party chairman, the move was criticized by more conservative members of the Illinois Republican Party.

He resigned on May 7, 2013, after his embroilment in a fight over same-sex marriage with members of his party. He commented:

On June 1, 2013, lobbyist Jack Dorgan, a vocal critic of Brady's same-sex marriage stance, was elected as Brady's successor.

Consulting and media After his resignation as Illinois Republican Party chairman, Brady formed Next Generation Public Strategies, a Midwestern-based government affairs and media relations firm. The ACLU hired him to lobby Republican legislators in Illinois to pass the same-sex marriage legislation that led to his ouster as Illinois Republican Party chairman. The law passed in November 2013 and the governor signed the legislation into law on November 20, 2013 making Illinois the 15th state to have same-sex marriage.

Support for other candidates Brady was an early supporter of Bruce Rauner, who defeated incumbent Democratic Governor Pat Quinn in the 2014 Illinois gubernatorial election before losing his bid for a second term to Democrat J. B. Pritzker in 2018.

In 2015, he was named as an Illinois state co-chair of John Kasich's presidential campaign.

Personal life Brady's wife Julie died of ovarian cancer on April 4, 2014.