Attorney earns back law license after prison- Charlie Naselsky

When I talked with Charlie Naselsky the other night on Jeff Grant’s Progressive Prison Ministries call, his authenticity hit me right away. This attorney who lost everything, went to trial, served 70 months, and then did something almost nobody does. He fought to get his law license back.

Growing Up Following the Rules

Charlie’s childhood was about as drama-free as you could get. “Mother, father happily married, you know, probably the poster parents for love and marriage,” he told me. His dad came out of Korea and went to work. His mom was a teacher. Charlie had one sister, and they grew up in middle-class suburbia.

“I was the ultimate rule follower, you know, whatever my parents told me to do, I basically did,” Charlie said. “I took no risks for most of my life.” The path was clear: high school, college, graduate school the very next day. Everything perfect.

He started in science but hit a brick wall with chemistry. So he shifted to political science, did well enough to make Law Review his first year, and landed a job immediately after graduation. By his sixth year practicing, he was a partner. Eventually he made it to a recognized national Am Law 100 firm.

When Neon Signs Light Up Broadway

Charlie’s downfall came through his relationships with others, though what he was found guilty of was his own conduct. His offense involved unreported income for 2005, but he wasn’t indicted until 2010. That’s five years of waiting.

“The number of neon signs could have lit up Broadway without any doubt,” he said, looking back. “I said, I didn’t, you know, okay, they’re neon signs, big deal, you know, I’m me. And you know, you get this superpower, almost this super optimism that I’m invincible.”

The decision to go to trial was brutal. Being guilty of a felony meant immediately surrendering his law license. “Giving up my law license was basically giving up my persona,” Charlie explained. “Who I was was 100% built around being an attorney.”

After a three-day trial in 2012, the jury came back in a couple hours. Guilty.

The Shock of Immediate Custody

Most people walk out of sentencing and wait for a letter telling them where to surrender. Charlie didn’t get that luxury. He was remanded immediately, which was a total shock.

“I practiced law to the night before I was sentenced,” he said. He’d properly executed documents to surrender his license and wind down his practice, but the possibility of being remanded was “so de minimis in likelihood that I didn’t give it a lot of thought.”

He spent five months between two federal detention facilities before finally getting to a prison camp. The difference was night and day. “The day I was transferred, we arrived. We went into the main facility, which was a medium. And then the officers said, OK, you can just walk outside and go up the hill and you go to the camp.”

Charlie asked what they meant by walking outside. The answer was simple: at the camp level, there’s inherent trust.

Finding Purpose Behind Bars

The most important thing Charlie did in prison was establish a routine with a nine-to-five job. He worked his way up from warehouse clerk to having actual decision-making responsibility. Eventually, he became the facility driver.

“I left the campus all the time,” he said. “I drove to the Home Depot, to the CVS, I could drive to the hospital, take somebody. I went to the airport.” They’d give him a cell phone, GPS, and vehicle. He was driving on the highway as a federal prisoner.

Having that responsibility mattered. “It was very important to have responsibility and to be recognized to have responsibility,” Charlie told me. His weekends became very distinct from his weekdays, just like on the outside.

He got 70 months total, which was at the top of his guidelines with two enhancements. But Charlie doesn’t spend time evaluating the propriety of the court’s decision. He accepted it and moved forward.

The Peer-to-Peer Success That Nobody Talks About

About three years after his release, Charlie started something that actually worked: peer-to-peer mentoring for guys coming out of prison. The results were real. Participation was voluntary, not mandated like most reentry programs.

What impressed me most was how he got genuine buy-in. Too many reentry programs are just boxes to check. Charlie’s was different because it was run by someone who’d lived it and understood what guys actually needed.

The program worked so well that the recidivism numbers were dropping. Then COVID hit and it got shelved. That’s the frustrating part, Charlie created something that was actually moving the needle, and it’s not happening anymore.

Fighting for His License Back

Here’s where Charlie’s story gets really interesting. Most attorneys who go to prison accept that their career is over. Charlie didn’t.

“I cannot find a specific inflection point,” he said about his downfall. “It’s a combination of events, but what you realize is that all of the decisions that were made along the way were yours. You cannot attach any of those decisions to another person.”

The motion he filed with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was excruciating to read, in the best way. Every page showed the depth of work required to prove he’d earned the right to practice again. The process took years.

I asked him about ownership versus blame. Charlie’s clear on this: “Once you own your own conduct, your own life, you can move forward and embrace the opportunities that lie ahead. If not, you’re going to simply fester on yesteryear and yesteryear has no value.”

What It Really Takes

Charlie’s story isn’t about inspiration. It’s about someone who refused to let his worst chapter be his final one. He didn’t just serve his time and hope things would work out. He built something meaningful with peer mentoring. Then he fought through years of legal process to reclaim his professional identity.

“Time is the ultimate healer,” he told me. “It does allow things to get repositioned in your head and adjust your priorities.”

Today Charlie practices law again. His kids, both doctors and attorneys, watched their father lose everything and then fight to earn it back. That’s a different kind of lesson than the one he was teaching them before his conviction.

The vulnerability he talked about on Jeff’s call? That’s what makes real connection possible. Charlie’s learned to be conscious of his surroundings without living under a rock. He still takes risks and exposes himself to opportunity. He’s just more careful about managing who he is and where those opportunities lead.