When James Uthmeier took a leave of absence from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration so he could run the governor’s flailing presidential campaign in 2023, he also signed on with one of the state’s most powerful and politically connected law firms, which regularly lobbies the state of Florida on behalf of its clients.
His time at the law firm was brief. What he did there and what he got paid are not publicly known. But Uthmeier’s stint at the private practice — reported for the first time here — raises ethical and legal questions about the Republican attorney now running for the job of Florida’s top prosecutor.
Financial disclosure forms filed by Uthmeier show he worked for GrayRobinson from September 2023 to January 2024. The law firm’s lobbying clients include Meta Platforms, Walt Disney World and Uber, and GrayRobinson also has provided legal services to the state, racking up more than $140 million in billings over the last five years.
Uthmeier returned to his job as DeSantis’ chief of staff after the GOP governor suspended his presidential campaign in early 2024 following a resounding defeat by Donald Trump in the Iowa caucus. DeSantis this year appointed Uthmeier to fill the remaining term of former Attorney General Ashley Moody, whom he’d appointed to the U.S. Senate.
This revolving-door arrangement between the state’s top office and a high-powered law firm that lobbies for its clients in Tallahassee and has made millions doing business with the state opens a gate to potential conflicts of interest, political experts said. More broadly, it illustrates powerfully the incestuous nature of politics and influence in Florida, where the lines between public servants and special interests are often blurred.
Those possibilities are magnified as Uthmeier now campaigns for attorney general in the 2026 election and has become a key figure in the Hope Florida scandal. One of GrayRobinson’s longtime clients is Centene, a national healthcare provider whose $67 million Medicaid settlement is at the center of that controversy.
As the state’s top criminal prosecutor and a member of the Florida Cabinet, which along with the governor votes on land deals, insurance regulation and other state business, Uthmeier could have a conflict in cases or business involving GrayRobinson or its clients, experts said. And if his employment at the law firm was an arrangement made with the governor’s presidential campaign, there could be a breach of election laws.
But there are no clear guidelines restricting state employees from going to a private law firm and then back on the public payroll.
“This is something that’s done all the time because the Florida Bar and Supreme Court never said anything critical about it,” said Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University. “That’s the problem here. The lines are very messy and very blurry.”
More than a year later, it is still not clear what Uthmeier did while at GrayRobinson or how he landed the job. He hasn’t answered repeated requests for comment, and neither has Dean Cannon, the former Republican Speaker of the House who currently runs GrayRobinson. The firm’s PAC, however, has donated $3,000 to Uthmeier’s 2026 campaign.
The question, Jarvis said, is what did GrayRobinson hope to gain from hiring the campaign manager of a presidential candidate? “Uthmeier would have given them inside track if DeSantis got elected. Everybody wants inside influence.”
Uthmeier’s tenure at GrayRobinson was so brief, Jarvis said, he suspects that Uthmeier “did nothing … but collect a paycheck … .And he couldn’t have had time to do legal or lobbying work if he was on the campaign trail all the time.”
GrayRobinson was no doubt reaping “the ancillary benefits of having someone listed on their law firm roster who was working on the campaign of a rising star at the time,” agreed Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida.
Whether it is good for the public, from both an economic and ethical standpoint, depends on whether Uthmeier participated in cases for GrayRobinson clients doing business with the state and then continued to help them once he was back in the governor’s office, Jewett said.
But the financial disclosure forms that shows Uthmeier worked for GrayRobinson do not require him to list any cases or clients, making it hard to determine if he had conflicts.
“To the extent that the current Attorney General worked for a lobbying firm raises ethical constraints about what companies he interacts with as attorney general,” said Gregory Koger, a political science professor at the University of Miami. “He should be careful to avoid making decisions about those clients the firm represented during that time he worked there.”
Theoretically Uthmeier could have a full-time job with the law firm and work on a campaign on the side, Koger said. “But if he is drawing a salary and not doing any work for GrayRobinson that could be construed as a campaign contribution,” he added.
GrayRobinson’s political committee donated $5,000 in June of 2023 to Never Back Down, a Super PAC created to support DeSantis’ presidential campaign. Nothing in the campaign report describes what might be construed as a payment to Uthmeier.
Uthmeier’s 2024 disclosure form, filed after he became Attorney General, shows he earned $7,650 from GrayRobinson and $9,583 from the DeSantis campaign in January of that year — the same month the campaign folded — and an annual salary of nearly $180,000 as the governor’s chief of staff, the post he returned to. His financial disclosure for 2023 was a different type of form and only required that he note where he worked, not how much he was paid.
Around the same time Uthmeier began to work for GrayRobinson, the firm was engaged to represent DeSantis in a lawsuit filed by Monique Worrell, a Democrat whom DeSantis removed from the state attorney’s job in Orange and Osceola counties. He claimed she was failing to do her job. She denied the charges and was re-elected last year. Uthmeier has been relentless in his criticism of her performance ever since.
The firm’s initial contract was for $349,998 but a second purchase order for the same amount was issued later. It’s a fraction of the nearly $140 million the law firm has billed the state over the past five years. The firm, founded in Orlando in 1970, employs more than 300 lawyers and consultants with 16 offices across Florida and one in Washington, D.C.
One of the attorneys assigned to the Worrell case was Jeff Aaron, a friend of Uthmeier who would start his own law firm a year later. Aaron’s new firm was hired as counsel to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity associated with First Lady Casey DeSantis with a goal of getting Floridians off welfare.
The foundation, and its role in funneling money from a state settlement into a political action committee, was the subject of a legislative probe in the spring and is now being investigated by a Leon County grand jury.
Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, who headed up the legislative examination of Hope Florida, has accused Uthmeier, then back in his role as DeSantis’ chief of staff, and Aaron of money laundering and conspiring to commit fraud, arguing they helped move $10 million that was part of a $67 million settlement with Centene to Hope Florida. Both have denied wrongdoing.
The foundation then sent the money — which Andrade said should have been spent on state health care costs — to two nonprofits, which in turn sent most of it to a political action committee run by Uthmeier on DeSantis’ behalf. The Keep Florida Clean committee was set up to defeat the 2024 ballot initiative that would have legalized marijuana.
Andrade called Uthmeier’s employment by GrayRobinson “a huge conflict of interest” because he didn’t officially resign as chief of staff when he went to the campaign and the law firm, leaving governor office duties to a secretary who answered directly to him. “James was still in control of the daily business of the governor’s administration” while being paid by a lobbyist, Andrade said.
“I’m sure every lobbyist in Florida would love to know who the chief of staff will be in five months and have the opportunity to pay them a check for what I assume was a ‘no show’ job,” Andrade said.
Moreover, Uthmeier had financial connections to each of the opposing sides in the Medicaid settlement agreement with Centene — to the state of Florida, as the governor’s top staffer for policy and administrative decisions, and to the company, through its employment of GrayRobinson.
Records show Uthmeier set up meetings between state officials and lawyers for Centene in 2022, about a year before he began working for GrayRobinson. Those negotiations broke off in 2023 after the state fired the outside law firm it had originally hired to negotiate the original agreement.
Negotiations resumed in 2024 after Uthmeier came back to the state and concluded that September, with the state agreeing to give $10 million of that settlement money to Hope Florida.
Uthmeier has denied playing any role in the settlement agreement negotiations but has said as far as he could tell it all looked legal. He also has defended spending the money fighting the medical marijuana initiative as in the state’s best interests. DeSantis’ committee spent millions of dollars on advertising and the amendment fell short of the 60% approval it needed to pass.
But because of his brief employment with the lobbyist for Centene, one cannot help but wonder what influence Uthmeier had in changing the terms of the settlement agreement, Jewett said.
“We don’t know every fact and detail yet but it looks like a probability of a conflict of interest and ethically whose best interests are at the heart of the thing,” Jewett said.
