Former City Council members Randy DeFoor and Brenda Priestly Jackson along with the city attorney to last hold the job, Jason Teal, are among six candidates vying to lead the Jacksonville Office of General Counsel.
They filed resumes and cover letters with Mayor Donna Deegan’s General Counsel Qualification Review Committee by the July 28 deadline, according to a response to a public records request.
Also seeking the city’s top legal job are City Deputy General Counsel Sean Granat; Deputy General Counsel of Government Operations Lawsikia Hodges; and Chief Legal Counsel for the Florida Department of Health in the Duval County Health Department Amy Meyer.
Before taking office, Deegan announced she was appointing retired attorney Bob Rhodes to serve as interim general counsel. She also named Jason Gabriel, an attorney for the Burr & Forman law firm and a former city general counsel, to lead the qualification committee.
The committee is scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. July 31 to review the candidates.
The committee will make a recommendation to Deegan, who will make the final selection before sending legislation to Council to approve the appointment.
The person appointed will lead an office of 48 attorneys that represents the mayor’s administration, Council, the city’s five constitutional officers, the independent authorities and Duval County Public Schools.
DeFoor and Priestly Jackson each served one term on Council from July 2019 through June 30, 2023, and did not run for re-election.
DeFoor and Priestly Jackson both served on the original three-member Council committee formed in early 2020 to investigate the attempt to sell the city-owned water and electric utility JEA to a private company.
Randy DeFoor
DeFoor represented District 14. which included Riverside, Avondale, Murray Hill and Ortega, and she chaired the Neighborhoods, Community Service, Public Health and Safety Committee.
A corporate attorney for decades, DeFoor has been senior vice president and national agency counsel for Fidelity National Title Group since 2013 and has worked for the financial services company since November 2011, according to her resume submitted to the city.
DeFoor was vice president and senior corporate counsel for Regency Centers Corp. from 1995-2009.
Brenda Priestly Jackson
Priestly Jackson represented portions of Northwest Jacksonville in District 10, which included, Sherwood and Richardson Heights and chaired the Rules Committee. She also served eight years on the Duval County School Board from 2002 to 2010.
Priestly Jacksonville has owned and operated her private law practice since 1996, focused on family, constitutional, civil rights and educational law, her resume says.
She was regional director and attorney for the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees Council 79 in Tallahassee from June 2013 through August 2014 and was general counsel and special adviser to the president of Edward Waters College (now University), from September 2010 to August 2012.
In 1995, she worked for one year as assistant public defender in the Office of the Public Defender for the 4th Judicial Circuit Court.
Jason Teal
Teal has spent the past 23 years as an attorney with the Office of General Counsel. He was named general counsel on Oct. 28, 2021, and spent 18 months leading the office after Gabriel left for private practice.
Stepping down from that role after Deegan’s election, he is now the city’s senior assistant general counsel.
Lawsikia Hodges
Hodges has been with the general counsel’s office since 2007. She was an assistant general counsel of government operations from 2007-14 before she was promoted to her current role.
From 2002-07, Hodges was an associate attorney of the business law department/commercial real estate and finance practice group for the Foley & Lardner law firm.
Sean Granat
Granat has been with the Office of General Counsel since 2004. He is now deputy general counsel in the city’s Tort, Employment & Regulatory Department.
He also has been assistant general counsel and chief of tort and employment litigation.
Amy Meyer
Meyer has been chief legal counsel for the Duval County Health Department since 2016. Before that, she was a senior associate attorney from 2015-16 at the O’Hara Law Firm in Jacksonville.
She worked for 10 years from 2005 to 2015 as the coordinator of claims and litigation for the University of Florida Self-Insurance Program in Jacksonville.
The Qualifications Committee
The five-member qualification committee is required by the charter to consider all candidates suggested by the mayor and may consider their own.
The four other members of the committee are:
• John Delaney, Flagler College president and former Jacksonville mayor and general counsel.
• W. Braxton Gillam, Milam Howard Nicandri & Gillam partner attorney and Downtown Investment Authority board member.
• Michael Orr, Orr | Cook managing attorney.
• Blane McCarthy, Jacksonville Bar Association president and a certified circuit civil mediator with the Jacksonville office of Miles Mediation & Arbitration. He also is a board-certified civil trial lawyer.