James Kilbreth focuses his practice on complex commercial, regulatory, and constitutional litigation and higher education issues. Jamie was the lead lawyer for the State of Maine in its litigation against the tobacco industry, securing a $1.5 billion recovery, the largest in State history. He was active in defending Maine’s first-in-the-nation ranked choice voting system, including the representation of Congressman Jared Golden in a suit challenging the constitutionality of his election under RCV. He also successfully sued the administration of former Governor LePage to implement Medicaid expansion on behalf of Maine Equal Justice and 70,000 potentially eligible people, represented Maine Audubon in its successful opposition to a proposed super Walmart that threatened one of the most important bird habitats in New England, and represented a class of retired state employees fighting pension cutbacks.
Jamie previously served as Chief Deputy Attorney General of the State of Maine, where he supervised all major civil and criminal actions of the office and personally handled several major cases. Before that he was the Deputy Attorney General in charge of all the state’s civil litigation. Prior to his work at the Attorney General’s office, he worked at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C.
In addition to his Martindale-Hubbell AV rating, Jamie has been recognized by a number of independent attorney rating publications: Best Lawyers in America in the categories of Commercial Litigation, Environmental Law and Natural Resources Law; Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business under Environment and Litigation: General Commercial; New England Super Lawyers in the category of Business Litigation (2007-2024), where he was named among “The Top 100” attorneys (2008); and as a 2013 Litigation Star by Benchmark Litigation.
Updated Oct 2025
