Bob Riley's Son-in-law, a Bradley Arant Lawyer, Appears in Data from Hack of Ashley Madison, the Web Site Whose Theme is "life is Short, Have an Affair"

Rob Campbell

Documents show that the son-in-law of former Alabama governor Bob Riley is among the participants in Ashley Madison, the Web site designed to facilitate extramarital affairs.
Account information for Rob Campbell, a partner at the Birmingham law firm Bradley Arant Boult Cummings (BABC), appears in the data dumped from a hack of some 37 million Ashley Madison users around the globe. Sources have compiled a list of Alabama users, many of them prominent individuals (lawyers, doctors, CEOs, CFOs, etc.), and we are planning a series of posts on the subject.
Rob Campbell is married to Minda Riley Campbell, daughter to the former governor and sister to Homewood attorney and Republican Party operative Rob Riley. Here is how Rob Campbell's Ashley Madison information appears in one database compiled of Alabama users:

ROBERT CAMPBELL,655.8,RJCAMPBELL35209@GMAIL.COM,1819 Fifth Ave N,Birmingham,35203

The number after Campbell's name is the amount of money he has spent with Ashley Madison, according to the data dump. The address for him--1819 Fifth Ave N, Birmingham, 35203--is the address for Bradley Arant. Sources say Rob Campbell is one of several Bradley Arant lawyers on the list.
We sought comment from both Rob Campbell and Minda Riley Campbell, but they did not respond to our queries.
According to a number of news reports, data from two dumps released so far includes identifying information for paying Ashley Madison members--e-mail addresses, physical addresses, amounts paid, etc. The hacking group called Impact Team has released a third data dump that reportedly includes nude photos and chat sessions among Ashley Madison users.
Our sources are combing through that information now, and it is expected to be in publishable form in a few days. Henry County Report, a Web site based in southeast Alabama, already has published nude photos (with strategically placed black boxes) of a lawyer and a doctor from the Dothan area.
Slabbed, an alternative news site based in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, linked to a Pastebin URL, which contained data for Ashley Madison users in Louisiana and Mississippi. Publisher Doug Handshoe said his site has been overwhelmed with readers since publishing the Ashley Madison lists, causing Slabbed to crash several times in recent days. Handshoe said in a comment at the site that a normal month's worth of visitors had come to the site in the past two or three days.
In a post last night, Handshoe said Slabbed received more than 1,000 visits in a 10-minute period yesterday afternoon. The site temporarily disabled two posts on the Ashley Madison queries in order to reduce traffic to a manageable level and get back online.
How many visits did Rob Campbell make to Ashley Madison, and what did those visits entail? We likely will have that information soon--for Campbell and a number of other prominent Alabamians.
That Bradley Arant lawyers would be outed in the Ashley Madison data dump is filled with irony. The firm reportedly raked in more than $10 million during Bob Riley's final two years in office (2008-10), ostensibly to fight "illegal" electronic-bingo facilities that the firm had declared were legal just a few years earlier.

Minda Riley Campbell

Why was Bradley Arant so popular with the Riley administration, to the point that the firm was showered with millions of taxpayer dollars? One reason appears to be that Rob Campbell worked there--or at least did some work there when he wasn't visiting a Web site that promotes extramarital affairs.
Bradley Arant also has contributed heavily to Alabama Attorney
General Luther Strange, who picked up the e-bingo battle from Bob Riley. As of July 2013, BABC had received $364,000 in public funds to help Strange's office fight e-bingo. The firm had contributed $21,000 to Strange during and after his 2010 campaign, so those numbers reflect a 1,730 percent return on investment for BABC.
As for Rob Campbell, what kind of law does he practice, when he isn't visiting Ashley Madison? This is from his bio at the BABC Web site:

Rob Campbell is a partner in the firm’s Birmingham, Alabama office, where his practice is comprised of a broad range of complex commercial litigation, including financial institution, class action, multidistrict and parallel proceedings, insurance coverage and sales practices litigation. Rob also counsels clients with respect to insurance regulatory issues and regulatory investigations.
Much of Rob’s practice is devoted to defending insurance and financial services litigation, particularly class action and opt-out litigation, throughout the Southeast. His clients include Liberty National Life Insurance Company, MONY Life Insurance Company, The Principal Financial Group, Jefferson Pilot Life Insurance Company, AXA-Equitable Insurance Company, GE Life and Annuity Assurance Company, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, and Southland National Insurance Corporation, among others.

Are all of Rob Campbell's clients now indirectly tied to the Ashley Madison scandal? That's hard to say, but we know that at least one of them--Liberty National Life Insurance--is directly connected to Ashley Madison.
More on that in an upcoming post.