SCRA Compliance for Servicers and Foreclosure Counsel: Military Status Files That Hold and Remediating Void Sales

Keith earned his J.D. with honors from The Ohio State University in 2004, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as Articles Editor of the Ohio State Law Journal. He received his B.S. from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1998, graduating with academic, military, and athletic distinction.

He is licensed in Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, Ohio, and Texas, and is admitted before the U.S. District Courts for the Northern, Middle, and Southern Districts of Alabama; the Northern and Middle Districts of Georgia; the District of Minnesota; the Northern and Southern Districts of Ohio; and the Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western Districts of Texas.

The Birmingham Business Journal named Keith one of its “Veterans of Influence” in 2019, and he serves as Chapter President of the U.S. Air Force Academy Association of Graduates. He is listed in The Best Lawyers in America® for Labor Law – Management (2027) and in the Lawdragon 500 Leading U.S. Corporate Employment Lawyers (2026–2027), and was named an Alabama Super Lawyers “Rising Star” in Employment & Labor from 2013 to 2015.

Keith has spoken at the American Conference Institute’s Residential Mortgage Litigation & Regulatory Enforcement Seminar and co-authored a 2012 analysis of the dismissal of a putative SCRA class action in Murphy v. Bank of America. He is a member of the Mortgage Bankers Association, the Conference on Consumer Finance Law, the Defense Research Institute, and the Alabama Bar Association, and an affiliate member of the Education Finance Council. He also writes on CFPB Regulation B and employment law developments for Bradley’s Financial Services Perspectives and Labor & Employment Insights blogs.

Keith’s SCRA work spans regulatory guidance and litigated defense. He represented Wells Fargo in its consent order with the Department of Justice concerning SCRA compliance and auto repossessions (United States v. Wells Fargo Dealer Services, C.D. Cal.). He obtained a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal of a putative SCRA class action in Murphy v. Bank of America (N.D. Ala. 2012), and secured summary judgment on two of three SCRA claims in Celestin v. Specialized Loan Servicing, LLC (S.D. Fla. 2014), which resolved before trial.

His foreclosure and title work includes a unanimous jury verdict after a three-day wrongful foreclosure trial in DeFranceschi v. GMAC Mortgage, LLC (Tarrant County, Tex. 2011); an equitable bill of review vacating a prior default judgment in Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. v. Khyber Holdings, LLC (Harris County, Tex. 2012); summary judgment as plaintiff in the title claim case Ocwen v. Chicago Title (Fulton County, Ga.); and summary judgment in ejectment defeating wrongful foreclosure claims in Federal National Mortgage Association v. Ethredge (Jefferson County, Ala. 2014). He has won dismissal or summary judgment in numerous wrongful foreclosure, quiet title, and slander of title cases in Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, and Texas, several of them affirmed by the Eighth Circuit.

Across his financial services docket, Keith handles claims and advises clients under TILA, RESPA, HOEPA, the FDCPA, and the FCRA, along with predatory lending, lender-placed insurance, loan repurchase and investor disputes, Texas home equity loans, bankruptcy adversary proceedings, and class actions, including summary judgment on a RESPA provision in Kirby v. Caliber Home Loans, Inc. (N.D. Ala. 2017) and dismissal of a putative nationwide class action in Carr v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC (N.D. Ga. 2017). He also represents employers in litigation under the FLSA, ADA, ADEA, and FMLA. As an Air Force Judge Advocate, he handled dozens of courts-martial and administrative boards as both prosecutor and defense counsel.