Tavares Floyd, a candidate for Richmond City Council, describes himself as “a lawyer, small business owner, lecturer, public servant and community advocate” on his campaign website.
The 6th District candidate has also been listed as a civil rights attorney in biography pages and blog posts from organizations he’s been involved with.
But Floyd — who is running against his former boss, Councilor Ellen Robertson — is seemingly not licensed to practice law in Virginia. Further investigation revealed Floyd is unlikely to be a licensed lawyer anywhere in the U.S.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported over the weekend that Floyd’s campaign finances were in question after multiple people listed as donors said they had not actually given any money to Floyd’s campaign.
After that and a follow-up story from VPM News, reporters received a tip that Floyd’s name was not listed in membership directories for the state bar associations in Virginia or Tennessee, where he grew up and graduated from Christian Brothers University in Memphis. (VPM News has verified that Floyd received a Juris Doctorate from a Louisiana law school in 2016.)
VPM News confirmed through web searches and phone calls with the Virginia State Bar on Monday that the organization had no record of Floyd being licensed to practice law in the commonwealth. State bar officials told VPM News that Floyd should appear in the database if he had a law license that had been revoked for disciplinary reasons or simply gone inactive.
The Tennessee Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Responsibility, that state’s mandatory agency, also has no record of Floyd being licensed to practice law. Further searches indicated that Floyd is not listed as a member of the bar in Louisiana — where he received his law degree from the Southern University Law Center while living in Tennessee.
Floyd responded to an email from VPM News requesting clarification about where he is licensed to practice law, but he didn’t directly answer most of the questions.
“I certainly was a legal consultant and advisor in Virginia, as a lawyer,” Floyd wrote. “I never said I was an attorney in Virginia. Nor did I practice law in Virginia. I’m a lawyer in Virginia. Get your facts right. Anybody who graduates law school & moves to anywhere is a lawyer.”
The American Bar Association considers “attorney” and “lawyer” interchangeable terms, both of which require passing the bar exam and being licensed to practice law in a jurisdiction.
In addition to the states where he has lived or studied, Tavares M. Floyd is not listed in the regulated lawyer and/or legal consultant directories for Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, the Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin or Wyoming.
(Montana and Oklahoma, which maintain voluntary directories, do not have a Tavares Floyd listed; VPM News separately verified that Floyd is not licensed in either state. New Hampshire and South Dakota do not maintain public-facing online databases of licensed lawyers; as of Wednesday, VPM News has verified that Tavares M. Floyd is not licensed to practice law in any U.S. jurisdiction.)
In response to follow-up questions about whether he had ever been licensed to practice law in any U.S. jurisdiction, Floyd sent one sentence: “You didn’t have your facts right from the beginning.”
Robertson, Floyd’s prior employer, did not answer specific questions about whether Floyd presented himself as an attorney when applying to be her liaison. VPM News also posed those questions to Richmond officials, who have not yet responded.
The incumbent did, however, deny that she had told Floyd she would step down and support his candidacy — as he told South Richmond News over the summer.
As VPM News has previously reported, Virginia code outlines that any false statement on a required campaign filing is election fraud, a felony punishable by prison or jail time.
Floyd’s campaign website lists an address in the West End — the other side of town from the 6th District — as its headquarters. He listed the same address when registering his campaign with the state.
VPM News identified other addresses associated with Floyd that were also not in Richmond’s Gateway District, where he’s running for council. Among the questions sent to Floyd was one seeking to clarify his current residence and referenced prior known addresses.
“I have lived in the city for a while. In the 6th district. Because you don’t have my address, that’s not my problem. And like any other person, in public service, probably a good thing for security reasons,” he responded.
The email continued: “You have a last known address. So what? If I wanted to, like Joe Morrisey, and many others, could have multiple residences and one primary residence. But I’m certainly a city resident. I don’t have to solidly anything to through you. Fake news.”
Before becoming Robertson’s council liaison, Floyd lived in Alexandria, where he was the secretary of a community organization called Concerned Citizens Network of Alexandria. Floyd’s CCNA bio identified him as CEO of the BeWell Project, “an organization centered on ending systems that limit Black wellness and emphasizing the urgency of protecting folks living on the margins of the margins.”
The SCC's business registry shows Floyd as the registered agent for a company named "The BeWell Project, L.L.C." with an Alexandria apartment as its listed address. That company, which was organized in 2018, has been inactive since July 2024 for failing to pay its registration fee — which was due in 2019 — and the IRS has no record of a "BeWell Project" or of any nonprofit entity tied to Floyd. (A search of ProPublica’s nonprofit database, which collects tax-exempt filings for established nonprofits, also yielded no results.)
His bio on the CCNA site also said Floyd “is currently a Lawyer at Floyd Legal Services.”
But no entity with that name is or has been registered with the State Corporation Commission — active or inactive — and VPM News was unable to find a website or other contact information for Floyd Legal Services. The finance department for the City of Alexandria did not have a record of a “Floyd Legal Services” company being licensed there. No active business entity registered with the SCC has Tavares M. Floyd listed as an agent, either.
