Monmouth College has selected retired attorney Brad Nahrstadt, class of 1989, to deliver the keynote address at its 169th Commencement Exercises.
The ceremony is set for noon May 17 on Wallace Hall Plaza.
Nahrstadt, a member of the college’s Board of Trustees since 2002, has balanced a distinguished legal career with extensive service to his alma mater and national organizations.
President Patricia Draves praised his dedication: “I’ve known Brad since my previous time on Monmouth’s faculty. I love working with him on the Board of Trustees, and what I so appreciate about him is his deep commitment to our mission and the way he works directly with students, faculty and administration to make sure our students are getting more opportunities.”
A summa cum laude graduate with degrees in English and political science, Nahrstadt was among the first to complete the Monmouth College Distinction Program. He earned his juris doctorate cum laude from the University of Illinois College of Law in 1992.
His career included partnerships at Williams Montgomery & John and as a founding partner and president of Lipe Lyons Murphy Nahrstadt & Pontikis, Ltd., before serving as chief operating officer at Donohue Brown Mathewson & Smyth until retiring in 2021.
He represented major clients including General Electric, Costco, CBS and insurers like Progressive and GEICO. Recognitions included being named one of the 40 Illinois Attorneys Under Forty to Watch in 2006 and a Leading Lawyer in medical malpractice and products liability defense from 2008 to 2019.
Nahrstadt holds selective memberships in the American Law Institute and Litigation Counsel of America.
At Monmouth, he was Blue Key Senior Man of the Year and chapter president of Sigma Phi Epsilon. Nationally, he served as grand president of SigEp in 2023 and received the Order of the Golden Heart, the fraternity’s highest honor.
He has returned to campus for anti-hazing programs for Greek life and to advocate for the college’s moot court competition.
Monmouth honored him with the Young Alumnus Award in 2000 and Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2014, plus induction into the Order of Omega Fraternity and Sorority Hall of Fame.
As an author, Nahrstadt wrote or co-wrote more than 90 articles and 40 book chapters on legal topics. Since retiring, he has published four books on early 20th-century politics, including a biography of 1904 Democratic presidential nominee Alton B. Parker. His latest, “The Men in the Arena: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Political Convention that Reshaped the Republican Party,” is slated for December release by Bloomsbury Press.