The POWER List: Edward L. Dowd Jr.

Dowd Bennett, St. Louis

Ed Dowd comes from a long line of family members who have served as lawyers or law enforcement officials or both. His career has included service as a federal prosecutor, a private practice litigator, special counsel and investigator.

Dowd served from 1993 to 1999 as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. Then from 1999 to 2000, Dowd assisted former U.S. Sen. John Danforth (now a Dowd Bennett partner) in a 14-month investigation of the fatal FBI raid of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993.

In recent years, he led the defense of former Gov. Eric Greitens on criminal charges that stemmed from an incriminating photo Greitens allegedly took of a woman with whom he’d had an affair. The case grew when the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office charged Greitens with improperly obtaining donor list from a charity Greitens founded. The first charge was dismissed after Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner was called as a witness, and the second died when Greitens resigned in 2018.

Dowd served as president of The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis from 2017 to 2018 and is involved with numerous organizations that support police and crime victims. He and fellow POWER List honoree Jim Bennett founded their firm in 2006.

Dowd earned his law degree from St. Mary’s University in 1977.