When Edward Tolley and Jerry Froelich persuaded a federal jury to acquit the University of Georgia’s former athletic director of multiple counts of fraud in May, Devin Hartness Smith was “right there in the battle,” with them, says Tolley of the young woman he hired in 2010 as his associate.
Smith, he says, handled the examination of former athletic director Jim Donnan’s bankruptcy lawyer, whose testimony helped explain to the jury that Donnan himself was a victim of the fraud scheme of which he had been accused. “I’ve seen a lot of young lawyers in 40 years,” says Tolley, “and she’s as good as they get.”
