Claire Bradley is a senior deputy prosecuting attorney with the Kitsap County Prosecutor’s office and the supervisor of the county’s Special Assault Unit, which handles all felony domestic violence, child physical abuse and child and adult sexual assault cases. Recognized multiple times as a Rising Star by Washington Law and Politics magazine, Bradley is a board member of both Kitsap Special Assault Investigations and Victims Services and Kitsap Domestic Violence Task Force, as well as a certified trainer for the National District Attorney’s Association and a trainer for the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner training program through Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

A native of New Canaan, Connecticut, Bradley completed her undergraduate studies at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

“I became interested in a law career in college,” she said. “I very briefly entertained a career in land use, but was quickly disabused of that interest in law school — have you ever read a land use treatise? I was very committed to criminal law in law school and really wanted to become a trial lawyer or prosecutor.”

She came to Washington in 1994 to attend law school at Seattle University. “I considered moving back to California after law school, [but] I ultimately resigned myself to the rain and fell in love with the area,” said Bradley.

Aside from an internship with a Kitsap county criminal defense attorney, Bradley’s entire professional legal career has been with Kitsap County’s Prosecutor’s office, which she joined in 1997.

“When my internship was concluded and I passed the bar exam, I applied only to the prosecutor’s office in Kitsap and was fortunate enough to get hired on as a full time deputy prosecutor,” she said. “I’ve never looked back since then.”

For Bradley working as a prosecutor is exactly what she wants to do.

“This job was a perfect fit for me. I enjoy trial work, the cases are interesting and I love serving the community,” she said. “I feel fortunate to get paid for what I love doing.”

Diane Russell, with the full-service Silverdale law firm Beattie::Russell, has also been recognized multiple times as a Rising Star by Washington Law and Politics. In addition to her work as an attorney, she has served as Judge Pro Tempore, taught legal courses at the university level and lectured statewide on employment law issues.

“I decided at about age 11 that I wanted to be a lawyer,” Russell said. “I’m not sure what it was that made me want to enter the profession other than a desire to help others.”

Although she was born in Albuquerque, Russell’s father’s Army career kept her family on the move, from Germany, to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Vicenza, Italy, then to Munich, Virginia, Alabama, and back to Munich, where her father was allowed to extend his tour of duty until she finished high school.

A family friend in Germany was a further inspiration to Russell as she contemplated a career in law.

“My high school guidance counselor really pushed me to be a legal secretary,” Russell said. “A family friend was a fairly highly placed government service worker…I admired her, she was independent, had a great lifestyle living in Germany and traveling all over the place…She was upset at the advice that I received from my guidance counselor. She said if you are smart enough to go to college, you are smart enough to finish it up by going to law school. That encouragement was just what I needed.”

She relocated to Washington with her family in 1979 and her early interest in law was a help to her when it came to applying to college and in some ways you could say she won her first case before she even became an undergraduate.

“We did not know our next duty station until the spring of my senior year,” she said, “and so I immediately applied to the University of Washington and was admitted…after reading the fine print in the Revised Code of Washington which provided that I was to be considered a state resident because I was a military dependent and showing that statute to the enrollment department so I could start in September, rather than wait to attend winter quarter as a non-resident which they wanted me to do.”

After law school Russell also started on her professional path as a Kitsap County prosecutor, working as a deputy prosecuting attorney for six years. But although she loved criminal law, the job began taking its toll.

“I enjoyed the intricacies of putting a case together, telling a compelling story, the appellate work and so on,” she said. “But I was working super long hours…Taking a vacation was impossible. I was seeing a small percentage of the population but it was the worst percentage — I was becoming more and more cynical.”

So when Rob Beattie approached her in 1993 and offered her a position as an associate in his private firm, Russell saw it as an opportunity to achieve a better balance between life and work.

“I had [and still] have the greatest respect for Rob — his approach to the practice of law, his dedication to his family, the community and his ability to create a good balance between work and private time,” she said. “It was a difficult decision to make — any change is scary — but it was the best thing I could have done.”.