Our Firm
the right lawyer for a crisis isn't always the loudest one in the room.
Sometimes the moment calls for a fighter. Sometimes it calls for someone quiet enough that, when it's over, you never have to think about us again.
We've spent our careers on both ends of that spectrum — trying high-profile, high-exposure cases in hostile courtrooms when a client needed someone who wouldn't back down, and handling matters that required discretion so complete that our involvement was never a headline, an investigation, or a story anyone else got to tell. A divorce that ends with dignity instead of a public fight. A government inquiry resolved before it craters a career or an entity. A license or reputation protected quietly and convincingly, before the damage is public and permanent. That range — the judgment to know which moment calls for which hand — is what nearly five decades of combined practice actually built.
We take on fewer matters, not more, because that range only works with real attention behind it. Every client gets judgment before strategy, discretion before disclosure, and the right posture for what's actually at stake — not a default one-size-fits-all approach dressed up as toughness. Some of our clients will never tell anyone we exist. That's not a failure of visibility. That's the job done right.
Meet the Browns
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Kristi Gavalier Brown
Founder & Managing Partner
Kristi Brown knows divorce. She’s been in your shoes. She’s been in your child’s shoes. She knows your fears, your sadness, your anger.
After her divorce, for fifteen years, Kristi threw herself into high-conflict, high-stakes civil litigation in North Carolina and Virginia. While Kristi’s litigation practice allowed her to counsel individuals, small business owners, and corporate clients through a wide variety of professional issues and disputes, it was never her true path. Prior to her career in the law, Kristi taught both kindergarten and fourth grade in Georgia’s public schools. That experience taught Kristi more about patience, communication, and meeting people where they are than any law school class, internship, or clinic ever could.
Kristi has watched — and lived — what the traditional, adversarial divorce process does to families: the money, the relationships, the years it takes to feel whole again. She felt called to help families do this differently. That's why she leads our Collaborative Divorce practice. Kristi helps spouses manage their divorce in a dignified manner to better protect, not only their wellbeing, but that of their children, their finances, and their futures.
Kristi graduated first in her class from Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Law Journal, and, in her third year, worked in the White Collar Crimes Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia. Kristi earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Georgia in Early Childhood Education, where she received a full academic scholarship and was an active member of Pi Beta Phi sorority.
Kristi is licensed in North Carolina and Virginia and admitted to the state and federal courts of both, including the Fourth Circuit.
Kristi practices alongside her husband and law partner, Gregory. At home, they have two beloved pups, Enzo and Herschel, a shared love of Venice, Italy and college football Saturdays, and most nights, a British crime drama playing on the television in the background. Kristi is also a proud stepmother to two adult daughters.
If you're standing where she once stood, talk to Kristi about a different way forward.
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Gregory Wenzl Brown
Partner
Gregory Brown has spent more than three decades at the center of the country's most consequential civil litigation, trying cases to verdict before juries and arbitration panels in state and federal courts nationwide, and arguing before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on multiple occasions. He has stood on both sides of the courtroom and, most recently, inside the federal government charged with enforcing the very rights he has spent his career defending.
Gregory served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, where he led the Division's Educational Opportunities Section, overseeing the investigation, prosecution, and resolution of serious federal civil rights violations across American higher education. It was the natural extension of a career already defined by that work, fought this time from the government's chair.
Gregory has served as lead counsel in some of the most closely watched civil rights matters of the past decade — cases involving First Amendment retaliation, campus antisemitism and Title VI violations, wrongful Title IX accusations, and unconstitutional, racially discriminatory scholarship programs, several of which drew national and international attention.
Earlier in his career, Gregory founded a litigation boutique based in North Carolina and built a national trial practice, representing corporations, universities, municipalities, police departments, and insurers through some of the highest-stakes trials of his era — wrongful death and medical malpractice cases, catastrophic injury litigation, construction and engineering defect disputes, and insurance bad-faith matters involving damages exceeding a billion dollars.
Gregory earned his law degree from Duke University in 1993 after which clerked for the Honorable Donald E. Walter of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana before beginning private practice. Gregory graduated from Deerfield Academy in 1985 where he was a Four Year Man and a multi-sport varsity athlete, including serving as a varsity team captain. Gregory attended college at The University of Virginia in his birthplace of Charlottesville, Virginia, receiving his B.A. in Government and Foreign Affairs in 1989. At UVa, Gregory was a Lawn Resident, two-time equestrian national champion for the University, and a member of St. Anthony Hall (Delta Psi). Gregory is a past member of the Board of Managers for the Alumni Association for the University of Virginia, a past Trustee for the Madeira School's Board of Trustees, and a past Trustee of the Christchurch (Va.) School.
Gregory has turned his will and his life over to God, is happily married to his life and law partner Kristi, is the proud father of two amazing daughters, and is carefully managed by pups Herschel and Enzo. He is a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and loves college football, traveling to Venice, Italy, British crime dramas and period pieces, and attempting to prove he is the better cook in the house.
Gregory is licensed in Virginia and North Carolina and admitted to the state and federal courts of both, including the Fourth Circuit.
Today, Gregory brings that full range — trial lawyer, federal civil rights enforcer, and trusted advisor — to Brown & Brown, where he leads the firm's Litigation and Strategic Advisory & Crisis Counsel divisions.