Todd and Julie Chrisley sued former defense attorney Christopher Anulewicz and his firm, Balch & Bingham, on Monday, seeking $25 million over the handling of the federal criminal case that sent them to prison.
The lawsuit says the couple blames Anulewicz and the firm for the criminal case that led to their jail time, arguing that a 2017 search by the Georgia Department of Revenue of their warehouse was illegal and that the lawyers waited too long to move to suppress derivative evidence from it. The filing says the consequences were catastrophic: the Chrisleys say they served time in federal prison, were separated from each other and from their children, lost their television show and endorsement deals, and were deprived of more than $25 million in income.
The suit lands after a long and public legal fight that began well before the couple became reality TV stars. In 2019, the Justice Department accused them of bilking banks out of more than $36 million, and a jury convicted them in 2022 on federal fraud-related charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Todd Chrisley received a 12-year sentence, and Julie Chrisley was sentenced to seven years. President Donald Trump pardoned both last year.
Much of the filing turns on whether Anulewicz was the right lawyer for a case of this size. The Chrisleys say he had no meaningful criminal defense experience and was drawn to the matter for the publicity and high-profile notoriety it could bring. Yet his current firm biography says he has nearly 30 years of experience in civil and white collar criminal business cases, was listed in The Best Lawyers in America in 2021 and appeared among Georgia’s Super Lawyers from 2014 to 2026.
The defense side pushed back quickly, even before the complaint had been formally served. A lawyer for Anulewicz said his client had not been served with the lawsuit as of Monday afternoon. Balch & Bingham said the complaint will be vigorously defended. The case now shifts from the criminal courtroom to a malpractice fight over whether a missed suppression motion changed everything, and whether the Chrisleys can prove the lawyers, not the evidence, cost them the case.
Their claim is built around what they describe as one of the most consequential federal criminal prosecutions in the country. The court will now have to decide whether that accusation has legal teeth or whether the firm’s defense prevails in a case that could reshape how the Chrisleys’ prison saga is judged after the fact.
