TOM LUTEY/Montana Free Press - Montana Free Press
•7/22/2026
A Helena jury found former state Senate President Jason Ellsworth guilty Tuesday night of misdemeanor criminal official misconduct 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 mishandling two contracts awarded to Agile Analytics in the final days of December 2024. Ellsworth had contracted with the Ravalli County firm to observe and report on state agencies 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’s 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.
“It shows (Ellsworth) was aware of the process that he wasn’t following,” Robles said in closing arguments. “But this is the very position the defendant put himself in, creating his own emergency.”
Ellsworth’s 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.
“The state’s trying to make this out like this is some kickback contract just for funsies, and we’re going to give somebody some money,” Judnich said. “That’s not what this is at all. This was a very serious contract about an issue that was extremely important to the Montana Senate.”
In the months leading up to the contracts, Ellsworth spearheaded a select Senate committee crafting bills to curtail judicial powers. 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’ 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’t want a press secretary and passed on the offer.
Ellsworth’s relationship with Eggleston wasn’t 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 “putting lipstick on a pig.”
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 his suspension from office ended. 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’s 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’s 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’s 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’s 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’s charge. They called one witness: Ellsworth.
Much of Ellsworth’s 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 “contract.”
This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
