A Decade of Experience as a Prosecutor
Sloan Ellis spent close to ten years as a state and federal prosecutor. His public service began at the 13th Circuit Solicitor's Office in Greenville, where he handled thousands of state cases, including burglary, armed robbery, drug charges and fraud. Most of the cases he worked on involved people who had never sat in a courtroom before. Early in his career, he learned that the file in front of a prosecutor almost never contains the part of the story that matters most.
He then spent several years on the defense side, first in Charleston with former U.S. Attorney E. Bart Daniel, where he was part of the trial team in what has been called the largest and most complex white collar investigation in South Carolina history. In his next role at Nexsen Pruet, he worked directly for William W. Wilkins, former Chief Judge of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and Chair of the Federal Sentencing Commission. He also argued appeals before the Fourth Circuit, the South Carolina Supreme Court, and the South Carolina Court of Appeals.
As a federal prosecutor, Sloan worked with the FBI, DEA, IRS, Homeland Security, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, SLED, and the South Carolina Department of Revenue on violent crimes, drug offenses, and financial crimes. With Brandi Hinton, he prosecuted the fiftieth person in the country charged with fraud connected to the Paycheck Protection Program.
Sloan earned the 2020 U.S. Attorney's Award for excellence in prosecution. He has been named to Rising Stars in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2023, and has been selected to Super Lawyers every year since 2024. Because he knows how the other side thinks, he can build a plan early and tell a client what is likely to happen before it happens, rather than after.