Former UVA Health CEO sues attorneys, firm in $34M defamation case

Former UVA Health CEO Dr. Craig Kent is suing three attorneys and a law firm for allegedly running a “defamatory campaign to oust him” from his post at the health system and financially benefit through a series of lawsuits, according to his Albemarle County lawsuit.

Kent resigned in February 2025, following a no-confidence letter signed by more than 100 UVA Health physicians and a third-party investigation by a different law firm hired by the university.

Kent’s $34 million lawsuit, which was filed at the end of February in Albemarle County Circuit Court, names three lawyers — Les Bowers of Charlottesville’s MichieHamlett law firm and Gladstone Jones and Lynn Swanson — as defendants, along with the New Orleans-based firm Jones Swanson Huddell, where Jones and Swanson are partners.

Kent’s complaint alleges that the defendants publicized “shocking — and demonstrably false — accusations about him” to the University of Virginia‘s board of visitors in a 26-page letter sent in February 2025, and later in media interviews.

The purpose of the Jones Swanson Huddell letter, Kent alleges in the lawsuit, was to “remove Dr. Kent as the apex leader of UVA Health and then capitalize monetarily on his removal, by filing a federal lawsuit that echoes many of the same defamatory accusations and uses Dr. Kent’s ouster to validate them.”

Kent’s lawsuit says that Jones and Swanson and their firm sent a 26-page missive on Feb. 24, 2025, to at least 23 people, many of whom were members of the university’s board of visitors.

The board met the next day to receive a briefing by attorneys at Williams & Connolly conducting an investigation of Kent and others at UVA Health.

U.Va. hired Williams & Connolly to investigate after more than 100 physicians signed a 2024 letter of “no confidence” that alleged Kent and Dr. Melina Kibbe, dean of the U.Va. School of Medicine, created a “culture of fear and retaliation” that “compromised patient safety.” The physicians’ letter also accused the UVA Health leaders of “excessive spending on C-suite executives and support” and “failure to be forthcoming on significant financial matters.”

After the Feb. 25, 2025, meeting ended, then-U.Va. President Jim Ryan accepted Kent’s resignation, the university announced in a letter to UVA Health faculty and staff.

According to the complaint, Jones lives in Albemarle County and is the stepbrother of one of the physicians suing Kent and others in federal court, a case in which the three attorneys represent the plaintiffs.

Kent’s lawsuit says that Jones Swanson Huddell’s letter, sent the day before the Feb. 25 meeting, falsely accused him of ordering a pediatric oncologist “to perform an unsafe bone marrow transplant on a child patient and caused patients to become blind and suffer strokes by mismanaging UVA Health’s funds,” and that attorneys Jones and Swanson, along with their firm, “designed the letter report to appear as if it were the result of an official, objective investigation by U.Va., although they were neither engaged by U.Va. nor directed to prepare any report.”

Further, according to the lawsuit, “the letter report was followed by a threatening message: Within [24] hours of its delivery, a board of visitors member warned the remaining board members and U.Va. President James Ryan that if Dr. Kent was not gone by 6 p.m. that day, it would be sent to The Washington Post.” The complaint alleges that Kent received “an urgent phone call” from Ryan on the afternoon of Feb. 25, 2025, in which he asked Kent to resign, a result of the “threat” of the letter being sent to the Post. The board member is not named in the lawsuit.

The complaint also alleges that some U.Va. board members “believed that they had received the official investigation of the university (i.e., the Williams & Connolly report), or at least a report from a law firm [that] was objectively collaborating with the official investigator,” as well as the alleged promise to send the letter to the Post if Kent did not resign by 6 p.m. on Feb. 25.

Kent alleges in the lawsuit that the motive behind the letter became clear in October 2025 when Jones Swanson Huddell and its local counsel, Bowers, sued Kent and others on behalf of the spouses of two UVA Health patients who died, as well as four UVA Health surgeons.

The October lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, and along with Kent, former U.Va. Medical Center CEO Wendy Horton, three physicians and Kibbe are named as defendants, as well as U.Va.’s rector and board of visitors and the U.Va. Physicians Group. This case is still active, and a motions hearing is set in Charlottesville for May 6.

According to Kent’s complaint, Jones and Bowers made allegedly defamatory remarks about Kent to media outlets in 2025 after the filing of the lawsuit. He seeks $1 million in damages each from Bowers and Jones, in addition to $32 million from the Jones Swanson Huddell law firm related to defamation.

Kent also seeks $7.3 million from Jones Swanson Huddell and $350,000 each from Jones, Swanson and Bowers in punitive damages related to “tortious interference with [Kent’s] employment agreement,” according to the lawsuit.

Jones, Swanson and Bowers did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.