A Helena jury found former Montana Senate President Sen. Jason Ellsworth guilty of official misconduct on Tuesday night after a six-day trial, setting up a sentencing hearing for Sept. 10. State District Judge Chris Abbott said Ellsworth could face up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $500.
The verdict came just after 8 p.m., hours after jurors began deliberating around 3:45 p.m. The case turned on Ellsworth’s handling of state contracts while he served as Senate president, a role that put him at the center of decisions the state treats as more than routine paperwork.
At the center of the case were two contracts worth $170,000 that Ellsworth signed off on in December 2024 with Agile Analytics. Ellsworth tapped the company to track and analyze a series of judicial reform bills during the 2025 legislative session, and prosecutors said the way the work was structured was designed to avoid extra scrutiny.
That point mattered because the state review process typically gets more involved when a contract crosses the $100,000 mark. Prosecutors pointed to original documents that called for the money to be paid upfront and split the work into two smaller contracts below $100,000, a structure they said was meant to keep the deal out of closer review by the Montana Department of Administration.
Ellsworth spent more than three hours on the witness stand Monday and acknowledged that Bryce Eggleston, linked to Agile Analytics, was a friend and former business associate who had worked for him in multiple different businesses. Ellsworth said Eggleston came to him interested in doing the bill analysis, that he told him to submit a proposal, and that he believed Agile Analytics could do the work because he trusted Eggleston’s ability.
But Ellsworth also said he had nothing to do with drafting the proposed contracts, did not want the work split or the money paid immediately, and never considered the documents he first submitted to be formal contracts. He said he thought the money had to be spent before the end of 2024, and later learned it only needed to be allocated. In closing arguments, Martin Judnich told jurors Ellsworth had no intention of evading procurement laws, that the contracts fit recognized exemptions to the standard bid process, and that state staff could have stopped the documents if they were improper.
The guilty verdict closes one stage of the case and opens another. Attorney General Austin Knudsen said Montana DOJ prosecutors and investigators did a great job securing the conviction and thanked jurors for their service, while both Ellsworth’s attorneys and prosecutors declined to comment after the verdict. For Ellsworth, the next date is now the one that matters most: Sept. 10, when Abbott will decide how much of the jury’s finding turns into punishment.
