"Irreplaceable" Irving Jones, author of ghost letters in North Birmingham Scandal, becomes a rare bird -- a Black partner at overwhelmingly White Balch firm

Irving Jones becomes a rarity -- a Black partner at Balch & Bingham

An attorney who played a central role in the North Birmingham Bribery Scandal has been named partner at the Balch & Bingham law firm, according to a report at the banbalch.com blog.

K.B. Forbes, blog publisher and CEO of its parent organization -- the CDLU public charity and advocacy group -- writes:

Embattled law firm Balch & Bingham finally made one of their most infamous African-American attorneys partner.

Irving Jones Jr., who worked with disgraced Balch-made millionaire and now federal prisoner Joel I. Gilbert, was a star witness in the North Birmingham Bribery Trial in 2018.

Jones ghost-wrote “dumbed-down” letters to be signed by African-American community residents in the AstroTurf campaign to block EPA testing in North Birmingham, according to court testimony.

The effort was a success and kids in North Birmingham continue, to this day, to be poisoned by toxic soil and polluted air.

According to court proceedings and news reports at the time, Jones also infiltrated environmental group GASP’s meetings and monitored the environmental group’s social-media feeds.

Jones reportedly likes to tout his experience as a counterintelligence officer, which apparently makes him a real-life spy. Forbes does not seem to take such claims too seriously, writing:

Jones loves to boast that he is a former counterintelligence officer, and we are sure infiltrating GASP was probably one of the most high-risk operations Irving has ever taken on in his incredible spy life.

We wrote about his court testimony as reported by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Archibald, who wrote, “Gilbert also asked Jones to draft a confidentiality agreement relating to [then-State Representative] Oliver Robinson. Four days before Oliver Robinson was to speak to the Alabama Environmental Management Commission, Gilbert got Robinson to sign a confidentiality agreement.”

Jones was working for Christian & Small during the criminal trial. He was rehired by Balch in November of 2018.

Balch took three weeks to announce the rehiring, and appears to have tried to obscure it.

Now that he is partner, Irving Jones Jr. declares to Law.com, “Strive to make yourself irreplaceable. By that, I mean commit yourself to producing your best product every time for your partners and senior associates, and take ownership over the cases to which you are assigned, such that you become an integral part of the case’s progression.”

A few questions might come to mind for the thoughtful reader, and Forbes is happy to raise them:

So was “Irreplaceable Irving” producing the best ghost letters for Gilbert?

Was “Irreplaceable Irving” an integral part of the North Birmingham Bribery Scheme born at the offices of Balch & Bingham?

How is “Irreplaceable Irving” feeling after he appears to have sold-out the African-American community of North Birmingham and is now a full-fledged partner of an alleged racist law firm whose partners are 98 percent white?