Whose Bank Is He Suing For? Oklahoma's Top Appellate Lawyer Filed a Lawsuit for His Boss's Bank While Earning $205,485 in Taxpayer Money

By Ron Durbin | Guerrilla News

Oklahoma pays Garry Gaskins $17,123.75 a month to hold one job. State payroll records for fiscal year 2026 confirm the figure. Multiply it out and it comes to $205,485 a year in public money for the position of Solicitor General, the attorney who argues Oklahoma's most consequential cases before the state Supreme Court, the federal appellate circuits, and the United States Supreme Court. It is one of the most powerful legal positions in the state, and it is supposed to have his full attention.

Some of that attention goes somewhere else.

On September 30, 2025, an attorney named Garry M. Gaskins II filed a civil petition in Osage County District Court. The case number is CJ-25-220. The client was Blue Sky Bank. The claim: JP Morgan Chase had accepted a forged check worth $485,751.58, and Blue Sky wanted its money back. Gaskins signed the petition himself, OBA bar number 20212, on letterhead that reads Drummond Law, PLLC. Same man. Same bar license as the Solicitor General. While the state pays him six figures to be its lawyer, he is, on the record, in a different courthouse, suing on behalf of a bank.

The Office He Holds

To understand why that filing matters, you have to understand what the Solicitor General of Oklahoma actually does. Under Oklahoma law, the Attorney General is the chief law officer of the state, with the statutory duty to appear for the state and prosecute and defend all actions in which the state is interested as a party. That authority flows from 74 O.S. § 18b. When Attorney General Gentner Drummond took office in January 2023, he reorganized the agency into a hierarchy where all divisions report through five key leaders. The Solicitor General sits at number three, behind only the Attorney General and the First Assistant.

The docket that comes with the title is enormous. Gaskins is lead counsel on Oklahoma v. EPA, a Tenth Circuit challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency's disapproval of Oklahoma's ozone implementation plan. He is the primary attorney of record on State of Oklahoma v. Tyson Foods, a decades-long, multi-million-dollar environmental case involving phosphorus pollution in Oklahoma's watersheds. In February 2026, Gaskins personally signed a Joint Motion for Consent Judgment in that case involving proposed settlements exceeding $100 million.

He is also counsel of record before the United States Supreme Court in St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, Docket No. 24-396, a landmark case testing the boundaries of the Establishment Clause and public funding of religious charter schools. This is the kind of case that defines a generation of constitutional law. It is not a side project.

The volume, complexity, and financial weight of these cases are supposed to demand undivided attention. Across the country, the role of State Solicitor General is universally recognized as a full-time executive position. The idea that an attorney could adequately perform those sovereign duties while simultaneously drafting localized foreclosure petitions and commercial banking lawsuits is, as the research record puts it, administratively implausible.

$205,485 and a Side Practice

The salary reflects the expectation. Former Attorney General John O'Connor, who served before Drummond, confirmed that during his administration the Solicitor General was paid $150,000 a year, and the role was strictly designated as full-time. O'Connor said he believed it was inherently illegal for full-time attorneys representing the state to engage in the private practice of law on the side. No one in his office did it.

Under Drummond, the salary climbed. Payroll records show the compensation rose from $180,000 to $205,485 in January 2026. That $25,000 raise positioned Gaskins among the highest-paid public attorneys in the state. The premium taxpayer investment carries a clear expectation: undivided loyalty and effort.

State administrative policy reinforces that expectation. Guidelines established by the Office of Management and Enterprise Services and mirrored across state agency handbooks say that full-time employees "shall not accept outside employment with any employer if it would impair the employee's efficiency on the job or conflict with agency responsibilities." Work related to outside employment "shall not be performed during the hours that the employee is being paid" by the state.

The legislature has already decided, for at least one of its law enforcement agencies, that this line cannot be blurred. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation is governed by 74 O.S. § 150.21, which explicitly bars OSBI attorneys from engaging in private practice while employed by the bureau. The title of the statute reads "Legal Division Established, Duties, Restrictions." The restriction is in the name. Nobody applied the same standard to the Solicitor General's office.

The Firm on the Letterhead

Gaskins did not find Drummond Law by accident. He ran it. Before his appointment as Solicitor General in January 2023, Gaskins served as president of Drummond Law, PLLC, a corporate law firm based in Tulsa that specializes in business litigation, banking, and transactional services. The firm is closely associated with Gentner Drummond, who maintained the practice before his election as Attorney General.

Four days into Drummond's term, when the office needed a Solicitor General, Drummond hired the man running his old firm. Gaskins took the state job. The firm kept running. His signature kept going out on its filings. According to automated legal tracking systems monitoring the Tulsa County docket, Gaskins' filings through Drummond Law never stopped or even slowed down following his elevation to the state's number three legal position.

The Blue Sky Bank Case

The September 2025 filing in Osage County is where the arrangement stops being an abstraction. In Case CJ-25-220, Gaskins filed a complex commercial complaint under the Uniform Commercial Code, specifically Oklahoma's adoption of UCC § 4-208 at 12A O.S. § 4-208, involving presentment warranties. The claim alleges that a check drawn by Utility Supply Company was materially altered without authorization and deposited at Chase, and that Chase breached its warranties when it presented the altered check to Blue Sky for payment. Blue Sky wants $485,751.58 back, plus interest, costs, and attorney's fees.

That is not a legacy case Gaskins was wrapping up from before his appointment. It was initiated nearly three years into his tenure as Solicitor General. Drafting a complex UCC complaint, managing discovery, and litigating against a massive corporate defendant like JP Morgan Chase requires substantial time. That time is being subsidized by the taxpayers of Oklahoma.

Now here is the detail that changes the story. Blue Sky Bank is not a random client. Gentner Drummond, the Attorney General of Oklahoma, is Blue Sky Bank's majority owner and the chairman of its holding company board. His wife and daughter sit on the bank's board as well. Drummond is also the man who appointed Gaskins to the Solicitor General's office in the first place. And right now he is fighting for his political future: a Republican runoff for governor on August 25, against Trump-endorsed challenger Mike Mazzei.

This is not the first time Blue Sky Bank has raised questions. The Oklahoman reported in May 2022, during Drummond's campaign for Attorney General, that Blue Sky Bank had processed federal PPP loan money to three businesses Drummond owns himself, earning the bank fees along the way. Drummond's campaign said the loans followed the same process as any other customer's. The bank collected the fees either way.

What $205,485 Buys

So the real sentence is not "the Solicitor General has a side practice." It is this: the Solicitor General's side practice represents his own boss's bank, and the taxpayers of Oklahoma are funding the arrangement.

When Gaskins bills hours for Blue Sky Bank at Drummond Law, and the profits of Drummond Law flow to its owner, the line between public funds and private enrichment becomes dangerously thin. The state pays Gaskins a premium salary to secure his time. That time is being harvested by Drummond Law to generate private legal fees. The taxpayers are effectively subsidizing the overhead for the Attorney General's private firm: specifically, the salary of its lead attorney.

Oklahomans decide whether Drummond moves one step closer to the governor's office in fifteen days. Blue Sky Bank was not the only file open on the Solicitor General's desk.

The next case Gaskins filed did not name a private company as the opposing side. It named the State of Oklahoma. That story is next.

Sources

1. "Drummond Announces New Leadership Team," Oklahoma Office of the Attorney General
2. "Gentner Drummond Announces New Leadership Team," CapitolBeatOK
3. State of Oklahoma Payroll, Fiscal Year 2026 (Payroll_Public_202605.csv)
4. "Drummond Law PLLC," Oklahoma Bankers Association
5. Blue Sky Bank v. JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. (Case No. CJ-25-220), District Court of Osage County, Oklahoma, filed September 30, 2025
6. "Garry Gaskins," The Federalist Society
7. "Gentner Drummond," Wikipedia
8. Oklahoma v. EPA (10th Circuit Case No. 23-9514), Environmental Protection Agency
9. Joint Motion for Consent Judgment, State of Oklahoma v. Tyson Foods, Oklahoma.gov
10. St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond (Docket No. 24-396), U.S. Supreme Court
11. 74 O.S. § 150.21, Legal Division Established, Duties, Restrictions, OSCN
12. Ethics Commission Employee Handbook, Oklahoma Digital Prairie
13. "Garry Gaskins II," Super Lawyers

Disclaimer: This article is for informational and journalistic purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. All factual claims are sourced from public court dockets filed with the Oklahoma State Courts Network (OSCN), state payroll records published under the Oklahoma Open Records Act, and publicly available legal filings. Guerrilla News is an independent journalism outlet and is not affiliated with any political candidate, government agency, law firm, or financial institution discussed in this report.