Judge Crist is a graduate of The College of Wooster (B.A. 1996) and The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law (J.D. 1999). He served as Law Clerk to the Honorable J. Rich Leonard, United States Bankruptcy Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina, before joining the creditors’ rights, corporate trust, and business restructuring group of Schottenstein, Zox & Dunn Co., LPA in 2000. Judge Crist was a partner of the firm since 2008, which later merged with Ice Miller LLP. He has been fortunate to litigate a variety of matters in bankruptcy and state courts, and to handle appeals to the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel and Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He primarily represented clients in bankruptcies and state court receiverships, protecting and restructuring financial interests, and enforcing debtor-creditor rights. His clients included unsecured creditors’ committees, liquidation and indenture trustees, governmental pension plans, financial institutions, and other creditors and business debtors.

Judge Crist was selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America, 18 years running, in the practice areas of bankruptcy and debtor-creditor rights, and in bankruptcy litigation. He frequently wrote articles and book chapters for a variety of publications, including an in-depth article on Stern v. Marshall in the American Bankruptcy Law Journal, and he often spoke at legal education programs on the topics of bankruptcy, receivership, and debtor-creditor law. Through his involvement with the Ohio State Bar Association as Chair of the Banking, Commercial & Bankruptcy Law Committee, he testified before committees of both the Ohio House of Representatives and Senate on revisions to Ohio’s foreclosure and receivership statutes, which he helped to draft, and other debtor-creditor laws. As an inaugural three-year member of the Chapter 11 Subcommittee of the Attorney Advisory Committee to the Court, he worked on the Procedures for Complex Chapter 11 Cases. He also served the federal legal community for over seven years as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Columbus Chapter of the Federal Bar Association, as Membership Chair, Vice President/President-Elect, President, and Immediate Past President. He also organized, hosted, and moderated the annual Demystifying Federal Court program. And he is a longtime member of both the Bankruptcy Law Committee of the Columbus Bar Association and the American Bankruptcy Institute. Recently, he has become an active member of the Thomas F. Waldron American Bankruptcy Law Forum.