Bryan Beatty

Biography

Bryan Beatty is a member of the N.C. Utilities Commission, a former secretary of the N.C. Department of Crime Control and Public Safety and a former state lottery commissioner.

Early Life and Education

Bryan E. Beatty was born March 10, 1958, in New Jersey, and raised in Salisbury, N.C.

His father, O.K. Beatty, was Salisbury's first black city council member and mayor pro tem and head of Livingstone College's biology department. His mother, Ellestine, was a third-grade teacher.

He graduated from Salisbury High School.

He earned a bachelor of arts in political science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1980.

He graduated from the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation Academy at Salemburg in 1981.

He earned a law degree from UNC-Chapel Hill Law School in 1987. 

Professional Career

From 1981 to 1984, Beatty served as a special agent with the State Bureau of Investigation, handling narcotics cases and providing security to Gov. Jim Hunt.

After law school, he practiced with the law firm of Johnson, Toal and Battiste in Columbia, S.C., before joining the N.C. Department of Justice.

In the Justice department, he served as an associate attorney general assigned to represent the UNC Hospital system and the Motor Vehicles Section.

In November of 1997, he was named the first Inspector General for the state, overseeing a staff of attorneys and investigators looking into fraud in the state public assistance programs.

In March of 1999, he was named the deputy attorney general for policy and planning.

In October of 1999, then Attorney General Mike Easley named him director of the State Bureau of Investigation. He was the agency's first black director.

Political Career 

In January of 2001, newly elected Governor Easley appointed him secretary of Crime Control and Public Safety. He was the department's second black secretary.

He continued as part of the so-called "Iron Cabinet" through the end of Easley's second term.

In 2005, Easley appointed him as one of the first members of the newly created state Lottery Commission.

In 2008, Beatty suspended the state Highway Patrol's K-9 program after a hearing exposed rough obedience techniques such as shocking and kicking dogs.

At Easley's direction, he also hired a New York-based consultant to do a four-month review of the Highway Patrol's hiring and training policies.

Beatty also served on a panel looking into e-mail retention policies, defended Easley's use of a luxury car on an overseas trip as necessary for security reasons and wrote letters to newspapers backing Easley's veto of a ban on larger boats on state highways. 

He was rumored to be under consideration for a position as secretary of the Department of Correction under Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue.

Instead, Easley appointed him to an eight-year term on the N.C. Utilities Commission in December of 2008. The legislature still must confirm the appointment.

Research and reporting by Ryan Teague Beckwith. 

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