Almost 10 years after the events that led to the Bridgegate political scandal that loomed over the second term of Gov. Chris Christie, one of the central figures in that scandal has had her legal fees paid by the state of New Jersey. The state originally rebuffed Bridget Anne Kelly’s 2014 request for the state to pay her legal fees on the basis of a federal grand jury indictment then pending against her.
In 2016, state employee Kelly and co-defendant Bill Baroni were found guilty of fraud and conspiracy in a plot to tie up traffic at the George Washington Bridge in payback against a local mayor during Christie’s 2013 re-election campaign. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the charges in May 2020. Others involved in the case had their legal fees paid by the state, except Kelly and Baroni. Now the state has reimbursed Kelly’s attorneys to the tune of $7.2 million.
But, for Kelly, that doesn’t mean she can draw a line under Bridgegate. “You ask anyone close to me, it’s not really behind me,” she said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News on Friday. “The hangover of Bridgegate remains … I haven’t been able to get my career back. I haven’t been able to get my reputation back. It feels good to know that my attorneys were compensated for the work they did … but there’s a lot of psychological trauma that’s involved with it that remains. And unfortunately I lost a lot of people or a lot of people walked away from me.”
