Donald Trump with the Easter Bunny at the White House Easter Egg Roll, April 21, 2025.AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
Donald Trump doesn’t talk about “draining the swamp” nearly as much as he did in his first term, but his ultra-populist 2024 campaign was built, at least in part, on an anti-Washington message. Yet despite his attack on so many of Washington’s structures, early signs are in that K Street, home to the city’s lobbyists, is doing just fine. In fact, the chaos seems to have potential clients running towards Trump-linked lobbyists.
Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm run by Brian Ballard—a Florida lobbyist who once was a Jeb Bush ally but for the last eight years has reliably stuck by Trump—reported earning more in the first quarter of 2025 than most K Street firms earn all year. According to its quarterly filings, released on Monday night, Ballard Partners earned $14 million, pushing it into the top tier of lobbying firms. In all of 2024, the firm earned just $19.3 million from lobbying—still enough to make it the 15th-biggest firm on K Street—but another three quarters like its most recent one would make Ballard Washington’s second- or third-biggest lobbying firm.
It’s not yet clear how many new clients Ballad will report in the second Trump administration, but according to Politico, that figure has already hit at least 130 since Election Day, including several high-profile targets of the Trump administration, like Harvard University and the Public Broadcasting Service.
The impulse to hire Ballard might not be a bad one for clients facing trouble with the Trump administration. Despite Trump’s history of anti-“swamp” rhetoric, some Ballard alumni have found very high, comfortable perches in the Trump White House—both White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi have worked as lobbyists for Ballard (Bondi notably repped Qatar, and Wiles repped General Motors).
Ballard wasn’t the only lobbying firm to see a Trump bump. Mercury Public Affairs, where Wiles briefly worked repping a tobacco company, reported earning $5.1 million from lobbying in the first quarter of 2025—nearly half the $11.4 million it earned in all of 2024. Miller Strategies, run by super-lobbyist Jeff Miller (the firm’s website includes a link to a Wall Street Journal article proclaiming Miller “Trump’s K Street rainmaker” for his prominent role in campaign fundraising) reported earning $8.6 million in the first three months of this year. In all of 2024, it only reported $12.6 million.
To be fair, Trump isn’t hurting the rest of K Street. The totals aren’t in, but the more traditional top lobbying firms—where the number of Republican or Democratic lobbyists may ebb and flow depending on the party in power, but revenue reliably increases—have mostly seen their numbers inch up or hold relatively steady since Trump was elected. Brownstein, Hyatt, which has been the top K Street firm for years, saw a slight decline in lobbying revenue in the first quarter, but others, like Akin Gump and Holland Knight, saw increases—just not ones as large as the swamp’s MAGA contingent.
