A Helena jury found former state Senate President Jason Ellsworth guilty Tuesday night of for awarding $170,000 in no-bid contracts to a company represented by a long-timfe business associate.
Jury deliberations took nearly four hours and left Ellsworth, a Hamilton Republican, potentially facing a six-month jail sentence for to Agile Analytics in the final days of December 2024. Ellsworth had contracted with the Ravalli County firm to as the government implemented laws passed by the 2025 Legislature to limit the power of Montana courts.
Ellsworth exited the courthouse shortly after the verdict was read. Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Christopher Abbott set Ellsworth鈥檚 sentencing for Sept. 10.
Prosecutors told jurors that Ellsworth circumvented the normal approval process for state contracts by signing the incomplete agreements first, then submitting the flawed documents for state officials to legitimize. Ellsworth knew better, Assistant Montana Attorney General Stephanie Robles told jurors. At the time, he was chairman of the Legislative Audit Committee, which watchdogs government affairs.
鈥淚t shows (Ellsworth) was aware of the process that he wasn鈥檛 following,鈥� Robles said in closing arguments. 鈥淏ut this is the very position the defendant put himself in, creating his own emergency.鈥�
Ellsworth鈥檚 legal team emphasized the legitimacy of the contracts after they had been modified by Legislative Services and the Department of Administration. The work under contract with Agile Analytics was legitimate as well, Ellsworth attorney Martin Judnich said.
鈥淭he state鈥檚 trying to make this out like this is some kickback contract just for funsies, and we鈥檙e going to give somebody some money,鈥� Judnich said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not what this is at all. This was a very serious contract about an issue that was extremely important to the Montana Senate.鈥�
In the months leading up to the contracts, Ellsworth spearheaded a . The committee wrote more than two dozen bills to increase outside oversight of the judicial system by introducing measures including performance evaluation for judges and partisan judicial elections.
Ellsworth suggested to his committee that it hire an outside contractor to report on how the judiciary put the laws into practice. The committee declined. Regardless, Ellsworth signed contracts with Agile Analytics in the final days of the year. Ellsworth had a 20-year relationship with Agile Analytics鈥� registered agent, Bryce Eggleston, a longtime friend and former employee who presented Ellsworth with contracts for the work on Christmas Eve 2025 as he picked Ellsworth up from the airport.
Eggleston registered Agile Analytics as a Montana business just weeks before presenting Ellsworth with the contracts, Robles said. Ellsworth had previously recommended Eggleston for a job as a press secretary for Montana Supreme Court Clerk Bowen Greenwood. Ellsworth secured funding for the position and recommended Eggleston for the job.
Greenwood testified that he didn鈥檛 want a press secretary and passed on the offer.
Ellsworth鈥檚 relationship with Eggleston wasn鈥檛 disclosed to the state staff tasked with making the contracts legally sound, Robles said.
The day after Christmas, the contracts were delivered to the state signed by the Senate president. There were just five days remaining in 2025, after which the state funds behind the deal would expire.
State employees characterized the work done after Ellsworth signed the contracts as making the best of a bad situation. Department of Administration Director Misty Ann Giles told jurors that work done to legitimize the agreements was like 鈥減utting lipstick on a pig.鈥�
Attorneys for the state Department of Justice accused Ellsworth of not only locking the state into a business agreement with Agile without proper approval, but also of dividing the work into two contracts in order to avoid a requirement that contracts worth more than $100,000 go out for bid.
Ellsworth has repeatedly attempted to have the case dismissed and the terms of . At one point, facing suspension from the Legislature, he argued that he had already been found guilty by his Senate peers, who in April 2025 banned him from the Senate floor and from committees for life. Those actions stemmed from ethics violations related to the contract issue. Lawmakers led by Democrats and nine Republican senators, including Ellsworth, chose to send the criminal case to the Department of Justice for review.
On Monday, the final day of testimony, Ellsworth鈥檚 attorneys filed three different motions to dismiss the charges. They argued that the Department of Justice had incorrectly accused Ellsworth of committing a crime in Lewis and Clark County. The contracts were signed in Ravalli County, they said, suggesting that the case was in the wrong court.
They also argued that the case be dismissed on insufficiency of evidence proving that Ellsworth acted with intent to obtain personal advantage via his 20-year acquaintance with Eggleston. Ellsworth鈥檚 legal team argued that although Eggleston was a registered agent for Agile Analytics, the Department of Justice did not prove that Eggleston had an ownership stake in the company.
Finally, Ellsworth鈥檚 team argued that as Senate president he had operated within his constitutional and legislative authority to arrange procurement agreements.
Judge Abbott rejected all three attempts to dismiss the case and acknowledged that by raising the arguments, Ellsworth鈥檚 attorneys were laying a foundation for an appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Only after going 0-3 in their efforts to have the case thrown out did the defense launch its counterargument against the DOJ鈥檚 charge. They called one witness: Ellsworth.
Much of Ellsworth鈥檚 testimony centered on disagreeing with Robles about the Dec. 26 contract he signed with Eggleston. Ellsworth insisted the contract was just a proposal.
Robles put copies of the contracts on a monitor, where the courtroom could see that they were clearly identified as contracts.
At one point Ellsworth indicated that revisions on the contracts had gone through 10 rounds, during which jurors stared at the monitor, which displayed each version labeled in large letters as a 鈥渃ontract.鈥�
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