The Florida Supreme Court suspended a Pensacola attorney’s Bar license in May after his 2024 arrest on multiple charges of possessing child sexual abuse material, The Florida Bar announced Friday.
Alex Rigsby, a former senior attorney for the Department of Children and Families, will have his Bar license suspended after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of The Florida Bar’s petition for interim suspension of his license due to the Office of the State Attorney charging him with 30 counts of possessing child sex abuse material in 2024.
“The above charges reflect adversely on respondent’s fitness to practice law,” The Florida Bar’s petition said.
The petition, filed by The Florida Bar in December 2025, also noted Rigsby became ineligible to practice law after becoming delinquent in the Bar’s continuing education requirements following his arrest.
According to a Supreme Court order on May 8, the interim suspension was granted and the tribunal gave Rigsby 30 days to close his practice and protect the interest of any existing clients at which time his suspension will become active. Rigsby’s Florida Bar profile lists him as currently ineligible to practice law.
Rigsby is currently held in Escambia County Jail without bond. His next scheduled court date is Aug. 12.
Why did law enforcement arrest Alex Rigsby?
Deputies arrested Rigsby April 12, 2024, after an FBI task force officer with the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office received seven cyber-tip reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children by a cloud management software company working with Verizon.
Among those seven tips were 161 files believed to contain and depict child sexual exploitation and abuse material and stored in the Verizon cloud storage Synchronoss. The Verizon data provided contained the name Wesley Rigsby, Alex’s father, who lives in Charlotte County, Florida, but after a search warrant was served at Wesley’s home, he told law enforcement that Alex remained on the family’s phone plan.
A deputy with the ECSO contacted Synchronoss and requested certain data stored in the cloud. The deputy then received over 160 videos and images of children as young as toddlers being raped.
“Among the files of CSAM were personal images of Alex Rigsby and his live-in girlfriend,” police records said. “These images and other personal images were taken in the timeframe of the NCMEC cyber tip and provide strong evidence Alex Rigsby’s account was in his control and not ‘hacked.'”
Who is Alex Rigsby?
Rigsby was admitted into The Florida Bar in September 2015 and had been in good standing without an discipline history since then.
According to The Florida Bar News, Rigsby joined the Pensacola Department of Children and Families Children’s Legal Services as a senior attorney in 2019.
Legal Services of North Florida, a firm that provides civil legal services for low-income individuals, hired Rigsby in June 2021, and he worked there until leaving the position in early February 2024. LSNF previously declined to disclose to the News Journal why Rigsby left his position.
Rigsby was also a member of the Escambia-Santa Rosa Bar Association, however his profile was removed from the member directory shortly after his arrest.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Supreme Court suspends Pensacola lawyer from Bar for child porn arrest
Reporting by Benjamin Johnson, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
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