Keith C Celebrezze

Attorney Keith C. Celebrezze is a Senior Associate and Branch Manager of the Mount Vernon office. Keith was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, attending Incarnate Word Academy, Saint Ignatius High School, Ohio State University (B.A. 1985), and Capital University Law School (J.D. 1988).

Keith enlisted in the Ohio Army National Guard in 1981 and served as a combat medical specialist until honorable discharge at the end of his enlistment in 1987.

While in law school Keith published an article in the Labor Law Journal for well-respected public sector union-side labor law attorney Robert Sauter entitled "Subcontracting in the Public Sector: a Mandatory Topic of Collective Bargaining" wherein Keith demonstrated inescapably that public employers must discuss the outsourcing of traditional government services with affected laborers unions prior to making their management decision. After graduating from law school, Keith served as a law clerk for the Honorable Judge David T. Matia of Ohio's Eighth District Court of Appeals in Cleveland, Ohio from 1988 to 1990. As the judge's clerk, Keith researched and wrote over one hundred judicial appellate opinions on most every area of the law in both the civil and criminal arenas. Many of Judge Matia's opinions were selected for publication in the Ohio Official Reports during Keith's tenure.

After completing his term as a law clerk on the Court of Appeals, and during the First Gulf War, Keith received a commission with the United States Navy as a Judge Advocate, where he served for 20 years - at sea, overseas, and here in the United States.  Some of the locations Keith served as a Navy attorney included Cuba, Iceland, the Pacific Northwest, Pearl Harbor, and as the senior legal advisor to Admiral J.J.Quinn the Commanding Officer of USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (CVN-72). Admiral Quinn went on from his command tour to lead the Navy Space Command, then served as the senior military advisor to the Secretary of Defense.  As a Navy JAG officer, Keith prosecuted and defended at hundreds of courts-martial and administrative hearings, and served as an investigative hearing officer in both criminal and administrative proceedings.

In addition to his litigation work, he was the lead staff counsel (SJA) at several major military installations, performing various legal duties akin to those done in a City Attorney’s and District Attorney's office.

From 2005 to 2010, Keith worked with the U.S. Department of Justice as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney. In this capacity, he interacted extensively with various federal law enforcement agencies and became highly experienced in the federal sentencing guidelines and federal criminal procedure - from grand jury to probation revocations. With the Hawaii and Western Washington U.S. Attorneys' offices, Keith prosecuted dozens of federal felonies and hundreds of federal misdemeanors in U.S. District Courts in Honolulu, Hawaii and Bellingham, Washington.

Establishing himself very quickly in this community, Keith is the vice president of the Skagit County Bar Association, a collection of approximately 200 local attorneys. Keith is very well regarded with his clients and his fellow attorneys alike.

Keith is the son of the late Chief Justice Frank D. Celebrezze (1928-2010), a respected Ohio judge with 22 years of service on the State Supreme Court and Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, and a former Ohio State Senator.