Steven McKinney, a former chair of the American Bar Association's section on environmental energy and resources, has been charged with fellow Balch & Bingham partner Joel Gilbert and a coal mining company executive in an alleged bribery scheme involving former Alabama state Rep. Oliver Robinson Jr.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Alabama announced Thursday that the two Balch & Bingham partners had been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of bribery, conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and wire fraud as a result of their involvement in an alleged plan to have Robinson oppose an environmental cleanup plan in Birmingham, Alabama.

Robinson, a former basketball star at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who played briefly in the National Basketball Association before serving in the Alabama House of Representatives from 1998 to 2016, was hit with bribery and conspiracy charges by federal prosecutors in late June.