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I'M sitting in the hotel bar of the Willard InterContinental in Washington, D.C., among all its beaux arts grandeur and over- stated elegance, waiting for my old law- school buddy Rusty Hardin to show up. He's late, of course, as is his habit. A former cli- ent once told him, "There's a minute, and then there's a Rusty Hardin minute." I'm just glad to have scotch in hand at the end of a long day. And the complimentary nuts in this place are downright addictive. Besides, I know Hardin has his hands full. A Houston attorney with a specialty in defending pro athletes, he's represented such jocks on the rocks as Scottie Pippen, Wade Boggs, Calvin Murphy and Warren Moon — and won their cases, often before the jury broke for lunch. His relentless cross- examination of former Playboy centerfold Anna Nicole Smith, who sought part of the $1.6 billion estate of her deceased husband, J. Howard Marshall II, was the stuff of legal legend and made Hardin a celebrity in his own right. His juries don't just find in his fa- vor — they want to take him home for dinner. Currently, he's representing Roger Cle- mens, a seven-time Cy Young Award win- ner who's charged with six counts of lying to Congress, a federal case stemming from his alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs during his Major League Baseball career. The case originally went to trial in July 2011, but Judge Reggie B. Walton granted Hardin's motion for a mistrial after the prosecutor introduced toxic hearsay testimony. Walton later ordered a retrial to begin in April 2012, rejecting a defense argument that a retrial would violate the double-jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment. Hardin has been accused of being some- thing of a media hound, but he simply charms the media like he charms his juries: by mix- ing a genuine Southern gentility with a pas- sionate advocacy for what he believes to be worthy causes. In the Clemens case, however, 52 JANUARY 15, 2012 he has taken a beating from the press. Sports- writers and bloggers have chastised him for allowing Clemens to testify before Congress in 2008 and arrogantly proclaim his inno- cence. Clemens would've been better served, the argument goes, if he had just copped to his supposed steroidal sins and asked for- giveness like other ballplayers caught up in the steroids scandal (ex- teammate Andy Pettitte, for one). This reasoning ignores the possibility that Clemens might be innocent, of course, but that's one of the occasional work hazards a high-profile defense attorney must endure in a case that regularly gener- ates national headlines. a 1995 Southern Methodist University A AA.COM/AMERICANWAY lthough we have spoken by phone over the years, I last saw Hardin at law-school reunion. Law school creates an esprit de corps born of the shared misery of professorial intimidation. But Hardin was not easily intimidated. Unlike other class- mates, he came with more history: a school- teacher, a Vietnam War veteran, a husband, a father. That didn't mean he didn't possess the same wide-eyed idealism that I did. We both wanted to practice criminal law. As he enters the bar at the Willard, I see that his ever-present, jury-winning grin hasn't faded. Nor has his homespun resolve to burrow into a companion's background and make him the center of his attention. "I want to know all about what you're doing," he says, ordering a chardonnay. I offer up tokens of my past, about how I hung up my lawyerly vest when I realized I enjoyed writ- ing about the law more than practicing it. I try to turn the conversation to the Clemens

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