A former Balch & Bingham partner received a five-year prison term after he was convicted of taking part in a scheme to bribe a former Alabama state lawmaker to oppose an environmental cleanup plan in Birmingham.

The lawyer, Joel Gilbert, 46, was sentenced on Tuesday following a guilty verdict in July on charges of bribery, honest services wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, according to the office of Jay Town, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Gilbert's sentencing came alongside that of a co-defendant in the bribery case, David Roberson, 67, who previously served as a government affairs executive at the coal mining business Drummond Co. Inc. Roberson received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence on Tuesday. The men were also each ordered to pay fines of $25,000.

“Gilbert was too clever by half and his concoction and execution of this illegal scheme was met today with just punishment,” Town said in a statement after the sentencing.

A defense lawyer for Gilbert—Jack Sharman of Lightfoot, Franklin & White—did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Roberson's lead defense lawyer, Henry “Hank” Asbill of Buckley Sandler, said on Friday that while the defense team and his client were “very disappointed” with the guilty verdict in July, they were “very much more pleased” with how the sentencing decision came out for Roberson.

The two-and-half-year sentence was less than half of what prosecutors had sought in Roberson's case, and the $25,000 fine was much lower than the $250,000 the government asked for, Asbill said. He also said his client intends to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and he's confident about the prospects of that appeal.

“We are optimistic that the appeal will result in the reversal of all the convictions,” Asbill said.

Prosecutors accused Gilbert and Roberson of directing more than $360,000 in 2015 and 2016 to the Birmingham-based foundation of former state Rep. Oliver Robinson Jr. as part of an effort to limit a Drummond subsidiary's exposure to the costs of an expansion of a Superfund site in the city. The government said Robinson accepted the money in exchange for his opposition to the Superfund site expansion. Robinson entered a guilty plea in 2017 to bribery charges as part of a deal with prosecutors and he was eventually sentenced to 33 months in prison.

Another former Balch & Bingham partner, Steven McKinney, was initially charged as a co-defendant in the bribery case against Gilbert and Roberson, but a federal judge dismissed the case against him in the midst of a trial earlier this year.

While the case originally involved two former Balch & Bingham partners, the firm itself was not a defendant in any criminal case. After the conviction in July, managing partner Stan Blanton issued a statement describing Gilbert's conduct as “contrary to the standards to which each of us at Balch & Bingham is committed and expected to uphold.”

The statement continued, “Although our firm was not a party to the case, I and the rest of our partners, associates and staff are deeply disappointed in any conduct that does not adhere to our commitment to the rule of law and to the communities in which we are fortunate to live and work.”

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