In private practice, White's clients have included former Texas prison chief James Collins, who was acquitted in September of accepting kickbacks from a food company in exchange for approving a $37 million contract to feed the company's products to prisoners.
Brittain's introduction to Earle came when Brittain worked for a former Travis County district attorney, who was then fighting an election challenge from Earle for the top prosecutor's job.
After Earle won, he asked Brittain to work for him.
"Ronnie is an icon to stay in office as long as he has, particularly in a town as political as Austin, and you make no friends as a district attorney," Brittain said.
Brittain helped start a division in Earle's office to oversee cases against elected officials. The thinking was to limit cases involving public officeholders to a single district attorney's office, where a high level of expertise would guard against charges being filed for political reasons.
"This seems to me to be contrary to that," Brittain said of the DeLay indictments.
He said he is concerned "about any prosecutorial office using grand juries and criminal prosecution to affect policies."
Turner worked for three years in Earle's white-collar crime unit before opening his own practice in 1982. He has been something of an attorney to the stars in Austin.
He represented actor Matthew McConaughey, who was arrested in 1999 for marijuana possession after a neighbor saw him playing the bongos naked in front of an open window of his living room. Turner also helped Willie Nelson beat a marijuana-possession charge in 1995.
