The truth slowly emerges about what UVA leaders knew about the Health System scandal.

by The Jefferson Council

A bombshell disclosure in a recent FOIA proceeding reveals that UVA’s Board of Visitors, led by Robert Hardie, quietly retained Williams & Connolly (W&C) as “special counsel to the BOV and the Audit, Compliance, and Risk Committee of the BOV” regarding issues with UVA Health on May 23, 2024 — four months before the September 5th correspondence in which 128 physicians signed a no-confidence letter in UVA Health leadership. You can read the never-previously-disclosed letter of engagement here.

That timing is significant. By May 2024, the Ryan administration had already received years of complaints, resignation letters, and HR filings involving patient safety, retaliation, and leadership culture. On May 6, 2024 — just seventeen days before W&C was retained — at least three faculty members filed formal reports with Human Resources, resulting in hours of subsequent interviews. UVA certainly did not request special counsel because everything was fine.

Yet the Ryan administration publicly insisted that UVA Health was being managed responsibly and was in “the best shape it has ever been in.” When the physicians’ no-confidence letter –- documenting significant issues with UVA –- became public on September 5, President Jim Ryan dismissed it two days later as a “strategy” built on “generalized and anonymous claims,” suggesting that a few faculty meetings were sufficient to address the concerns being raised. He accused the physicians of “besmirching” the reputations of UVA Health leadership and casting an unfair “shadow over the great work of the entire health system.”

What Ryan did not mention — what he chose not to mention — was that the Board had already retained representation months earlier over the very issues those physicians were raising. President Ryan’s outrage at the concerned physicians is especially duplicitous on his part – having known since May that issues were significant enough to warrant hiring independent outside counsel.

That omission was not an oversight. It was a choice.

The FOIA proceedings further reveal that W&C was formally re-engaged the day after Ryan’s dismissive letter — September 8, 2024 — to conduct what UVA only publicly announced nine days later on September 17 as a fresh “independent review” into the physicians’ concerns.

The May 2024 arrangement was never mentioned in UVA’s prepared media statement and subsequent email to UVA Health Faculty members. University Spokesman Brian Coy told the Cavalier Daily “that the University has worked with Williams & Connolly in the past but did not specify when or under what circumstances.” The intentional deflection here again, knowing that W&C had previously been retained to specifically investigate potential UVA Health issues, is disingenuousness personified. 

The Ryan administration didn’t just stay quiet — it deliberately obscured the truth from the very community it was supposed to serve. The secret retention of W&C, the carefully managed public framing of the investigation, and Ryan’s pointed public defense of the very leaders his own Board had already retained outside counsel to scrutinize — taken together, these were not failures of communication. They were a coordinated effort to control a narrative at the expense of the physicians, patients, and community members who deserved the truth.

To this day, UVA continues to refuse to release the W&C investigation report into UVA Health. A FOIA court proceeding is now underway to compel disclosure. The only insight the community has into the extent of the UVA Health crisis is the separate Jones Swanson Huddell report produced by the firm separately hired by the concerned physicians– which the Jefferson Council obtained via FOIA and released in January 2026. Multiple departures at UVA Health still remain unexplained.

Until the W&C investigation report is released, the full extent of the problems at UVA Health — and what the Ryan administration knew, and when — remains hidden behind a wall of privilege claims and institutional silence. The community that President Ryan pledged to serve is still waiting for answers he chose, more than once, not to give.