Blue Ridge Bankshares CEO retires after turnaround

William “Billy” Beale retired March 6 as president and CEO of Richmond-based Blue Ridge Bankshares, the holding company for Blue Ridge Bank and BRB Financial Group, and as CEO of the bank, according to a Thursday announcement.

“I was hired out of retirement to do a job, and that job is now done,” Beale stated in the news release. “I’m proud of all we have accomplished during my time at the bank, but I turned 76 last December, and it is time for me to return to retired life.”

The bank’s board appointed Harry Golliday, previously executive vice president and chief credit officer at Blue Ridge Bank, as interim CEO and president of Blue Ridge Bankshares and interim CEO of the bank.

“Since I joined Blue Ridge Bank in 2024,” Golliday stated in the release, “the bank has undergone a significant change that has materially strengthened our financial condition, asset quality and business mix. I look forward to working with the company’s board of directors and executive team to achieve our strategic and financial goals.”

In early 2024, a few months after Beale joined Blue Ridge Bankshares, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, an independent bureau within the U.S. Department of the Treasury, hit the company with a cease-and-desist order related to deficiencies in its Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering compliance program. The order cited “systemic internal controls breakdowns,” “weak independent testing” and “insufficient BSA staffing.”

On Nov. 13, 2025, Blue Ridge Bankshares announced that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had terminated the consent order.

“Being released from the regulatory consent order in less than 23 months is a testament to the hard work and the expertise of our team,” Beale stated in the November news release.

The bank raised $165 million in new capital during Beale’s tenure, according to a message Beale posted to LinkedIn on Thursday.

“Along the way we successfully [exited] the BaaS business,” he said in the post. “To do so we managed the runoff of [$500 million] in deposits by raising local deposits and shrinking the loan book. Many were surprised by our success.”

Board Chairman Vance H. Spilman thanked Beale in Thursday’s news release “for the exemplary job he has done on behalf of employees, shareholders and customers, most notably overseeing the bank’s exit from the OCC Consent Order and our return to profitability.”

From November 2018 to July 2020, Beale was president and CEO of Midlothian-based Community Bankers’ Bank. Before that, Beale was CEO of Richmond-based Union Bank & Trust, now known as Atlantic Union Bank. During his tenure, from 1991 to March 2017, the bank’s total assets grew from $180 million to $8.5 billion.

Beale earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from The Citadel in South Carolina. He later graduated from the Southwestern Graduate School of Banking at Southern Methodist University.

Golliday has more than four decades of experience in the financial services industry with leadership roles with Capital One Financial and SunTrust. He launched his career as a corporate banker with Wachovia in Winston-Salem, according to his LinkedIn page. He earned a degree in business administration from Washington & Lee University.

For 2025, Blue Ridge Bankshares reported net income of $10.7 million, compared with a net loss of $15.4 million in 2024.

The company had 292 full-time and 10 part-time employees at the end of 2025. The bank, which has its main office in Martinsville, is the 19th largest bank and thrift in the state.