James E. Brydges, Jr.
“Trust me. I’m a lawyer,” is not something most of us could say without having our friends laugh out loud, but to Jim Brydges, Taylor and Walker’s Managing Shareholder, it’s the most important part of being a lawyer.
Because many non-attorneys get their impressions of lawyers through “Law and Order” or “Boston Legal,” Brydges works to instill the importance of ethics, collegiality and support among the younger attorneys in the firm. “If you can’t trust each other, if you don’t know that the other members of your legal team have your back, you can’t possibly achieve your goal,” he says.
The same ethos follows him into the courtroom. Collegiality among attorneys is one thing he stresses, both in the courtroom and outside it. Active in many law-related organizations such as the Virginia Beach Bar Association and the Virginia Association of Defense Attorneys, Brydges feels that giving back to the profession is one way he can help foster cooperative relationships in a profession that is generally considered to be adversarial.
Despite the fact that his father and two uncles were lawyers, Brydges entered Duke University as an engineering student because an aptitude test he had taken said he would be well suited for it. When he found he excelled in the English and history classes, but not the engineering classes, an astute advisor looked at his interests and his family history and asked him if he didn’t think being an attorney was more logical.
Graduating from UVA law school, he went to work with one of his uncles and primarily practiced in the areas of criminal and court martial defense. He still remembers a case involving possible Cold War espionage at Oceana Naval Air Station. A computer guidance system was missing from the nose cone of an F-14 fighter. It was determined that a young man with a hobby in electronics thought he could use the parts in a project on which he was working, not understanding the sophistication and secrecy of the stolen parts. The young man realized that he couldn’t use them and tossed the parts. As a result of this event, Oceana decided it might be prudent to build a fence around the area for security.
After setting up his own general practice in Virginia Beach when it was “still a small town,” Brydges joined Taylor and Walker in 1982. He is currently listed in “The Best Lawyers in America” in the insurance defense category.
Married to his wife Esther for 40 years, their son is an attorney in Roanoke who has two children with another on the way, and their daughter lives in the San Jose area and has one child. He was active as a youth basketball coach and was Commissioner of Boys Baseball when his children were young. An avid athlete, he has played golf with the same foursome on Saturday mornings for the last several years. Tennis and jogging also keep him fit, but his favorite and most rewarding thing to do is dealing with young people, either on the youth athletic field or in the office.
