A Baltimore attorney who has practiced law since 2002 has been disbarred after a judge found he repeatedly abandoned clients, lied about filing paperwork, and once skipped a client's trial to travel to the Caribbean. Roland Patrick Brown was disbarred by the Supreme Court of Maryland, which issued a brief per curiam order against him, with a full opinion expected later.
Chief Justice Signs Off on Disbarment
The disbarment order was signed by Matthew Fader, who serves as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland, according to the Maryland Daily Record. The case had been listed on the court's argument schedule as Attorney Grievance Commission v. Roland Patrick Brown, and the court's March 20, 2025 order prohibited Brown from further practicing law in Maryland, according to mdcourts.gov.
Findings of fact detailed eight separate complaints against Brown, according to the Daily Record's report, written by Ian Round. Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Troy Hill, who issued those findings, described Brown's misconduct as recurring over an extended period and across multiple representations. Hill said he found a likelihood that Brown would repeat the misconduct and said he lacked confidence Brown would comply with professional rules in the near future.
A Habeas Petition That Was Never Filed
One case centered on a woman who paid Brown $4,000 in 2020 to challenge the legality of her son's detention. According to the findings, Brown never filed the habeas corpus petition but assured the woman on multiple occasions that he had. She eventually learned from a court clerk that no petition had ever been filed. Brown later said he returned her money, but he did not provide proof of repayment to the Attorney Grievance Commission. Judge Hill said the record reflected little, if any, meaningful effort to provide the client a defense.
In another case, the Daily Record's report states Brown failed to appear for a client's trial in March 2022. The night before trial, he emailed the prosecutor to say he would be unavailable but did not notify his own client, and he never filed a motion to postpone. By his own sworn statement, Brown said he and his wife had traveled to the Caribbean after their son was arrested in Jamaica.
A Wrongful Death Claim and a Missed Motion
The findings also described a wrongful death claim brought by the mother of a man who died in 2018 while incarcerated in Hagerstown. The mother hired Brown to pursue the claim, but he failed to respond to a motion to dismiss in the case, and the plaintiffs ultimately lost. A judge found that Brown had failed to allege that any party represented the decedent's estate as personal representative or administrator, according to the report.
In a separate matter, the man's friends and family visited Brown's office to ask about the status of the case, and Brown told them a ruling was still pending on a motion. He later admitted, in September 2023, that the motion had actually been denied six months earlier. The findings state that in at least three cases, Brown told clients he had filed motions when he had not.
Guilty Plea Advice and an Unauthorized Interview
Brown also advised a client to plead guilty with a promise to seek expungement after probation, only for the client to later learn that an accessory-after-the-fact conviction could not be expunged. Judge Hill characterized that advice as either knowingly misleading or reflecting fundamentally deficient professional judgment, per the findings described in the Daily Record's report.
In yet another matter, Brown directed an employee to interview a co-defendant his firm did not represent, and neither Brown nor the employee verified whether that co-defendant had his own attorney. Maryland's professional conduct rules prohibit attorneys from interviewing unrepresented defendants who are represented by counsel without their attorneys' consent. Investigators also found that Brown withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from attorney trust accounts, even though Maryland's professional conduct rules require trust-account disbursements to be made by check or electronic transfer.
Brown was also found to have failed to cooperate with the Attorney Grievance Commission's investigation, missing a hearing, failing to respond to emails and providing insufficient information when he did respond. He did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Record, and Maryland Bar Counsel Tom DeGonia declined to comment on the case. Judge Hill found that Brown violated Maryland professional conduct rules governing competence, diligence, communications, fees and trust-account records.
Part of a Statewide Pattern
Brown's case lands amid a broader rise in attorney discipline activity across Maryland. The state's Office of Bar Counsel opened 2,078 files in fiscal year 2026, up from 1,760 the year before, according to the Attorney Grievance Commission of Maryland's 51st annual report, published by courts.state.md.us. The number of sanctioned attorneys statewide climbed to 46 in fiscal year 2026 from 40 the prior year, and complaints involving competence, diligence and communication failures made up 41 percent of all docketed complaints, the same report notes.
Despite that overall increase in sanctions, disbarments themselves were less common than usual. The report counted ten disbarments statewide in fiscal year 2026, below the ten-year average of nineteen per year, making Brown's case notable even against a backdrop of rising complaint volume.
